It seems that the longer I practice martial arts the harder it becomes to figure out how I'm doing. There are days when I leave the studio feeling great and there are days when I think that I should just stop because I'm not getting any better. That I vacillate back and forth between the two strongly suggests that I'm an unreliable judge of my own performance.
I find that conclusion troubling because I've long viewed MA practice as an internal dialogue with myself. I shouldn't compare my performance against the people around me, but rather against my own assessment of how I should be doing. Which seems to be a reasonable approach if you believe, as I do, that MA practice is a long-term project in self-improvement. But it requires that you be able to accurately judge your own performance which, as I've said, seems like a tall order these days.
For example, I often have a hard time making it through warmups; they are, to borrow a phrase from Wallace Stegner, my personal Gethsemane. I think that I'm progressing appropriately and that workouts are gradually getting easier, but at the same time the following facts seems to be true:
- I'm in visibly better shape than some of my peers.
- These peers don't seem to have the same problems making it through the workout that I do.
These two points seem to be generally incompatible, which tells me that at least one of my observations is inaccurate1. Clearly I'm not my own best critic in this case.
Further meditation on this leads to the conclusion that one important, but perhaps overlooked, function of an MA studio is to provide an external reality check for students. I think that part of my problem may be that Studio X is weak in this regard; the senior staff doesn't provide a lot of feedback in this regard and I don't know that I'd trust their opinion if I did. Which sucks, I suppose, but there doesn't seem to be much that I can do about it at this point.
1 Further observation makes me believe that most participants, including the chief instructor, are cutting corners. But then again that's exactly the kind of thing I'd say to salve my ego, isn't it? You see the problem here...
2 comments:
I have had the same problem with the warmups for my kickboxing class.
I found that if I made myself do a small amount of intense exercise every morning (e.g. 20 press-ups & sit-ups as fast as possible) my overall stamina and "hustle" during a work-out improves.
It's probable that this will work better for some than others. It may not be physical anyway, but rather psychological -- making me think of the first 20 press-ups as "free".
If you're doing a competition MA, one way to assess your skill level is compete and see how you do. My skill level is objectively very low by this measure :(
Yeah, that's been my response as well. I've started doing all the hard bits (pushups, situps, etc.) in sequence on my own. That definitely helps, its just a matter of working that into my schedule on a regular (i.e. daily) basis.
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