How to become a Great Martial Artist by Wim Demeere

1. Train every day, if only for a couple of minutes. For some reason, most martial artists have this notion that you need to train non-stop for at least an hour for it to be effective training. They then use that as an excuse not to train because they don’t have the time to get in those 60 or 90 minutes of training on a given day. I think that’s nonsense. Even five or ten minutes per day is better than nothing at all. If you keep it up for twenty years, it all adds up and helps you become a martial arts expert in the long run. Of course, it’d be better if you could train longer every day but that’s not in the cards for everybody. Just do your best to get some training in every day, no matter what and no matter how long.
2. Slow down.Another myth is that you need to go full speed, full power to learn anything. That’s even more nonsense. Try to relax and slow everything down if you want to make progress. Why? Because that’s how you learn and perfect movements. When you learn something new, you do it slowly until you have basic competence. Only then do you speed things up a bit. When you make mistakes, you slow down to correct them and then speed up again. And so on until you can go at full speed and power without major mistakes. Fast forward a few years. You now do those same techniques but a lot better than at first. But that doesn’t mean you don’t have to slow down your training anymore. The truth is, you still make mistakes but they’ve just become a lot smaller. So they’re easy to miss until somebody points them out to you or you make a video of yourself and review it in slow motion. When you slow down your training again, you can correct these errors better.
3. Use technology. When I started training, we had VHS tapes and books, that was it. Instructors used this to promote their art and as a student, I used those things to learn. Today, things are different. You have DVDs, Blu-Ray (with loads of detail), MP3 podcasts, E-books, blogs, video on demand, downloadable files, streaming video, on-line training, YouTube, etc. There has never been so much information readily available. So use it in your training, all of it. You’ll probably find certain things more practical than other so by all means, drop whatever doesn’t work for you. But do use those that can help you get better. One caveat though: technology will not replace training. No matter how much you might know, that doesn’t mean you can also do it.
4. Your goals, and therefor your training, will change throughout your life. When I was younger, I wanted to be a bad-ass competitor so I trained real hard to compete to the best of my ability. When I stopped competing, I started shifting towards a more practical and self-defense oriented training regimen. I still train for full-contact competitions because I believe the training has value. But the self defense part is equally important now. As I get older, the competitive-type stuff holds less and less of an interest for me and my training reflects this. My evolution is by no means unique, on the contrary, and you’ll probably change too. So if it happens, don’t worry about it. Even if it means abandoning an art you practiced for years. Just keep going with whatever new one you feel is right for you.
5. Don’t focus on just the short term.This is perhaps one of the toughest ones in this list when you’re younger than 30-35. Because it’s usually about that age before you to start feeling your body age, get used up and it starts breaking down. Being able to do certain techniques (like jump spinning back kicks and other such  funky stuff) was something you took for granted and then suddenly, it takes an effort. Other things slowly become impossible. In other words: you’re no longer 18. Here’s the thing: you can do a lot of permanent damage to your body in your twenties but only start feeling the results of that in your thirties. But by that time, it’ll be too late and you’ll spend the rest of your life trying to minimize the resulting problems or work around the. Been there, don’t that, have the T-shirt and am forced to wear it everyday… So when you train, consider the long term effects of that training and then make up your mind if they’re worth it or not.
   
   

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6. The harder you train, the more you need to care for your body. As I write this, I’ve been having back problems for the last 6 months, my arthritis is flaring up again and that’s just the least of my problems. So let’s just say I’m talking from experience here… The less you take care of your body and neglect it, the worse a price you’ll pay later on in life. It’s a cliché, I know, but it’s also very much a true statement. I remember being 18 and going out all night, sleeping a few hours and then train at a seminar all day. Sure, I was a bit tired but that didn’t stop me from training hard all day long or from going out once again that same night. If I try that crap today, I’ll be worthless at the seminar and aching for days afterwards. Taking it one step further, if you train hard every day and don’t build in rest phases every 4-5 weeks, the cumulative damage will only begin to show after you turn 30-35. And then you get to spend the rest of your life in pain… So think about recovery, rest, good nutrition, supplements, physical therapy and the like the harder you train. Not only will you keep your body in better functioning order, you’ll also be able to train at that intensity for a lot longer.
7. Learn to relax. It seems a contradiction but in reality it isn’t: to move faster and with more power, you need to learn how to relax.  A simplistic explanation (there’s loads factors involved) is this: your body works with opposing muscle groups/movements. The quadriceps straightens the legs, the hamstrings bend it. The triceps straightens the arm, the biceps bends it. Again, it gets more complicated than this but it’s an easy way to understand what I’m talking about. Here’s the thing: for the triceps to straighten out the arm explosively like you do in a straight punch, the biceps has to relax. If it doesn’t, it acts like a brake, slowing down the extension and robbing it of its maximum power. This principle applies to all your movements and not just straightening your arm. As a result, one of the best ways to improve the quality of all your movements is to learn to relax your body so you can control your muscles to the point where they relax sufficiently when needed.
8. Learn about anatomy and kinesiology. If you don’t know how your body is built, how can you expect to master it? If you don’t know how the human body moves, how can you expect to master your movements? Sounds simple but it’s one of the things I’ve seen neglected over and over, even by long time practitioners. Why is it important? Because the older you get, the less your body will do everything automatically. When you’re young and healthy, training is easy: you have loads of energy and can train hard every day even (or perhaps especially) if your technique sucks because you can power through. But after a few years, this becomes more difficult; your body starts to become less flexible, energy levels go down, cumulative injuries hinder your training, etc. It’s called “getting older” and we all go through that process. Here’s the thing: the more you lose your youthful energy, the more you’ll need to replace it with something else to get the same results. That something else is technique. And good technique is based on your knowledge and understanding of anatomy and kinesiology.
9. Distinguish between what you feel and what is actually going on. This ties back to the previous point and I’ll illustrate it with an unrelated story: for a few months already, I felt real bad after every meal: tension in my abdomen, difficulty breathing, pain, etc. It wasn’t fun but it was manageable and the MD I went to couldn’t find anything, even after doing a gastroscopy. About half a year into this, I was on a weekend holiday at the coast with friends. It was fun and relaxing but I went to bed with the same symptoms after dinner. Though this time, they were off the charts: incredible chest pain and feeling suffocated. I was afraid I wouldn’t make it until morning, so I was rushed to the hospital in the middle of the night… 60 min. later, I left the hospital and slept like a rose. What happened? The emergency doctors checked my vitals, prodded me left and right, stuck needles in me, etc. Their conclusion: there was nothing medically wrong with me. Then they started asking questions about work, life, etc. 10min into that talk, they gently explained I’d been overexposed to stress for the last 6-7 years and my body was telling me to cool my jets. My heart was fine, my digestive system was fine, but my mind wasn’t and it was wreaking havoc on my nervous system. Then and there, I decided to change my life and the symptoms vanished in a few weeks.
   The point of this story? It felt like I was going to die but I wasn’t. I’d have sworn my number was up but all I needed to do is relax more. Pretty big difference… So what you feel, regardless how intense that feeling is, is not always a reliable indicator of what’s actually happening. This is true in many regards: you might feel as if you’re throwing a powerful punch but in reality, it might be weak as hell and vice versa. For the karate guys amongst you, try this: throw your best straight punch a couple times in class, wearing a gi. The snap of the gi makes it feel like you’re punching with Herculean strength. Now take off the gi and do it again. No more snap of your sleeves and the punch feels less powerful. Now go outside, still no gi, and do the punch with the wind blowing at you hard. It’ll feel even less powerful still. Your punch was probably just as hard the first time as it was in the second and third example, but it didn’t feelthe same. With a little bit of effort, you’ll find tons of similar things happening in your training: you feel one thing but something else is happening, something you don’t know about. Don’t let that delude you, either in a positive or negative manner. Just keep on training to get better.
10. Distinguish between time-spent  and time-practiced. This is something I realized many years ago but only got to appreciate more as I got older. There is a significant difference between the time you’ve spent training in martial arts and the time you’ve actually practiced it. I’ve been training for over 25 years, that’s the overall time I’ve spent studying the arts. The last 21 years of that time-spent, I’ve trained an average of 1-3 hours each day, 6 days a week. That’s my time-practiced. I’m not saying this to boast, nor is it anything special (lots of people have way more time-practiced than me); I’m only stating facts here, trying to make a point which is: both have their own value.
    Time-practiced is important as it’s what gives you experience and understanding. No practice = no skill. For more on that, again please read my “How to become a martial arts expert” post which I can summarize like this: train, train, train and then train some more. If you don’t train, you don’t even get to step onto the playing field. In contrast with that is time-spent, which looks at the big picture. It is an indicator of which level of skill and expertise you can realistically have at that stage in time. Meaning, if you only train 90min. twice a week for ten years straight, you can hardly expect to call yourself a uber-mega-ultra-grandmaster when compared to somebody who trains 2 hours a day, every day for seven years in a row. Sure, you have three more years of time-spent, but he has way more time-practiced. The opposite is also true: Train four hours every day for one year and then compare this with the skill of somebody who’s trained one hour every day for twenty years. Then the latter is more likely to have the surplus in skill and experience. Here’s the thing: I believe you need a balance between both. Some things, you only learn by training hard every day. Other things only become apparent after you’ve trained for a long time. You need both to become a better martial artist. So when you look at your own training, ask yourself these questions: have I trained hard enough? Have I trained long enough? Whatever the problem you’re facing in your training, the answer can often be found in these two questions.
11. There is no end-level. Everything, especially martial arts, has levels of depth of knowledge and understanding. Meaning, there is superficial knowledge and on the other end of the scale, extreme in-depth knowledge on any given subject or topic. Having superficial knowledge is great but it’s only the first step if you want to become a better martial artist. In-depth knowledge is where it’s at but that puppy is an elusive one: it takes years and years of dedicated training to get it (see #10). It’s also impossible to have in-depth knowledge of everything. Barring the occasional genius, people rarely specialize in more than one or two fields and become world-class level in those.Don’t let that bring you down though. Like the cliché says, it’s not about the destination but the road traveled. Which is just another way of saying you have to squeeze everything out of whatever potential you have, regardless of how much or little that is. The point I want to make is this: when I say “learn to relax” or “learn about anatomy and kinesiology” there are levels to that (and all the other things I wrote here) as well. Which is wicked cool because it means you can always learn more. But it’s also a warning to avoid getting lost or trapped in your training: when you think you “know” something, it should sound the alarm bells because there’s a real danger you’ll stop going for those deeper levels of understanding for that specific thing. This is often not really a conscious decision but something that just happens: you “know” so there is less of a need to keep on digging.  Notice I didn’t say your knowledge is wrong or anything like that. That isn’t even relevant. I am saying knowledge is not static, nor is it ever complete. So just keep on learning and training.