Challenges in training... Courage!

 Yes, courage. And it can mean a lot of things, but today I have a specific one in mind. While it applies to everyone involved in training the martial arts or other combative methods, it is particularly pertinent to those actually teaching and coaching. In the former case, this primarily entails having the fortitude to always keep taking a sincere look at your driving force in training, and being strict in deciding if what you do in training is in line with it, or you are just enjoying the workout (better case), or maybe even enjoying the illusion (worse case).

For the instructors, school owners, system founders/heads etc, there is an even more important and deeper component to it. Namely, besides the sincerity in saying what your system or school are all about, so that the potential students are not misguided, one must be absolutely honest and ready to change the material in the face of new findings. Here is what I mean...

Let's say you are dedicated to training your clients for the functional combative skill, in the real time and against resisting opponents (either in a sports arena or street self-protection), and you have developed a well-rounded curriculum and fairly good training methodology to achieve this goal. Owing to that,  you attract a fair number of trainees, maybe even open a couple of branches in other places. And then...one way or another you discover a new set of methods or training protocols that you know for sure will improve the whole process. That, however, requires investing time and effort to rewriting your curriculum and training programs, educating assistant instructors (some of which may be unwilling), and finally saying to your clients "sorry, forget what you have been paying for so far, there is a better way". Hmmm... Do you actually go for it in spite of all those challenges, or do you hide behind the good old "if it ain't broken, don't fix it"?

By the way, it applies just as much to the schools/instructors whose mission is the preservation of intact tradition and the original teachings of whatever master/system. What happens if you stumble upon an older proponent of the same lineage, who proves to be legit and then says that a portion of what you have been doing for the last 20 years is wrong and ought to be done differently? Damn, you already have a dozen or more black belts under you, who have been teaching the same "mistakes" to their own students, not to mention your peers who had graduated under the same tutelage fraught by the same mistakes! Where do you go from there? Keep on doing the same thing, finding an excuse of the "it's a different lineage" sort, or do you go back and start correcting everything, thus possibly losing students and associates? 

There are some people I admire greatly in this regard, who had the courage and integrity to change their teaching and training despite any and all inconveniences it may have caused. Alex Kostic has already been a subject of a couple different articles in this blog. He had both the sincerity to acknowledge the shifting focus in this work and change the training methods to suit it, while openly announcing the changes to his students (and losing quite a few in the process), but also alienating himself from a wider community of his "home style" and withstanding their mud slinging. The late Mario Topolsek did the same in a traditional art of Uechi Ryu (like in the above example), and with similar consequences. And an excellent example of the functional paradigm is Tom Sotis, whose entire career in the realm of fighting arts has been a constant strife to outdo himself and update his achievements. 

Interestingly enough, during a chat we had, Sotis pointed to a very interesting "matrix" of options that people have in their training if driven by honesty, depending on their underlying motivation. Let's show it like this:

T            NC

R              MC

F            NC

In the above table T stands for traditionalist, R stands for recreationalist, while F is for functionalist. Note that under the two opposing poles there is the same indicator NC, while for the middle way it is MC. It denotes that both the traditional and functional proponents have no choice in how they will train - they always have to be congruent to the latest discoveries of what constitutes the truth in their chosen endeavor. The recreational practitioner (some may call them enthusiasts; I agree with such term in the early stages of one's training, when they are still trying to figure out what is their guiding principle), on the other had, has many choices because his or her participation in the given activity is predicated on the goal of enjoying the activity on its own, regardless of its authenticity. 

In this regard, I'd say courage is a coin which on one side is made of asking difficult questions, and on the other side of embracing honest answers. Simple...but not always easy.