The Martial Arts Take To Darned Long to Learn!
The bully charges out of the alley and tosses a whole, darned trash can at you! Do you ask him to take that garbage can back because you’re only on your ninth Karate lesson and haven’t reached the deflecting the garbage can lesson? Or do you ask him go away because, here it comes, you forgot to pay your dues at the local dojo?
The point of this silliness is to ask the question, why does it take so long to learn the martial arts? You can teach a guy to fly a fighter jet, go to war, spend time in a concentration camp, come home and retire, in the time it takes to learn some systems of the martial arts. One system I heard of takes 17 years to earn a black belt.
Some people will make the excuse that you’re learning more than self defense. You’re solving martial mysteries and its all about the lifestyle and you need to invest in your old age, you know? But you’re still lying under that trash can and the guy is pulling out a knife, and no matter how many lessons you’ve taken, you have to do something!
Garbage in, garbage out, is the old saying. And it is true that if something is hard to put into your head, then it may not be so easy to get out. Maybe it is time to look for an art that is as fast to learn as running, or boxing, or some other easily understood sport.
It is true that the Martial Arts are not a sport, they are an art, but they can still be learned easily and quickly. They just have to be taught not by one mystical technique after another, but rather by understanding concepts behind them. Those endles techniques that you memorize, to be truthful, are random data, and, often as not, they don’t really relate to one another.
That is a problem, to be sure, even if you learn a thousand techniques, you might not have enough data to be able to make sense out of the whole thing until you reach one thousand and one. And, let’s face it, a hundred years is to long to become competent. And then go to heaven.
Teaching the martial arts on a conceptual basis is the solution. Have a fellow learn concepts, instead of memorizing endless strings of tricks. Have him learn in this manner and he’s suddenly going to be able to figure out those thousand techniques on his own.
That’s the key, you know, give him an acorn and water him, and watch the tree sprout. Unfortunately, most martial artists, not to be disrespectful, are lost in the branches. But that’s the real way to teach, give the guy a concept, plug him into a few situations which demand he create solutions pretty darned quick, and, zingo bingo, you’ve got yourself an instant martial artist.