Martial Arts: Training Tips
By Njoli Brown
WHY TRAIN OUTDOORS? Because our parks, plazas, yards, forest areas provide all the tools. For many practitioners it can hearken back to another era when master instructors looked at their classes more as very personal mentorships, creating a family vibe and inspiring creativity in the methodology.
In urban and rural settings alike, footwork happens on hillsides, mulch, pavement, grass, up and down curbs and benches. Drills go on in the rain (and sometimes snow) and on the warmest of days. The sessions staying engaging as folks figure out how to make their practice relevant in all the terrains in which they spend their day-to-day.
There’s nothing here saying we don’t appreciate our indoor space for all the convenience it allows. But take another look before you write off a group that trains in the park. Often these groups are cost saving, student focused and have the flexibility to maintain small classes because they don’t have to concern themselves with matching the overhead it takes to rent an ongoing location. Are you looking for artifice or art? Take your training outdoors this summer.
tually a black belt, had a friend who was opening a Kung-Fu school in a local community center. My brother thought that would be good training for me, so he enrolled me and another of my siblings at the school. I trained there until I finished high school. After college, I ran into a friend that was studying Wing Chun. I loved the efficiency of that system and trained for over ten years. After that, I was introduced to silat by a neighborhood friend. I was instantly drawn to it’s effectiveness and completeness.
As an instructor, I try to create a warm and welcoming environment where people can come to class, work hard, and enjoying their progress. I teach my students that success in martial arts, or life for that matter, is not a straight line. It’s okay to struggle and fail as long as you are “failing forward.” As far as my student’s aspirations go, I want everyone to be ambassadors of the art and have confidence in their ability to execute what they’ve learned with confidence in class or in the street, if need be.
information that I had no hope to process… I just had to swallow as much as I could and try to keep up. The movements appeared familiar, and yet I couldn’t apply them in context. My timing was off, my footwork was backwards, and all of my instincts seemed wrong. After each lesson, I’d ride the subway for an hour from Queens back to Brooklyn and my head would literally ache. If you were to ask me, “what did you learn today?” I wouldn’t even be able to tell you and yet I could see myself improving. Hence, I was faced with a choice… I could accept returning to the status of a “beginner” or I could let my ego get the better of me. Fortunately I chose the former. By putting aside my pride and approaching the lessons with the beginner’s mentality, I feel I was not only able to learn the movements much faster, but to understand the underlying principles and philosophy at a deeper level. Ultimately, this experience proved beneficial to my progress in every style that I practice. I think that most arts run much deeper than we tend to recognize. Although it is not always overtly expressed, my teachers all seem to embody this appreciation. Despite their accomplishments and recognition, they are still students of their art. To me, that is one of the greatest lessons I’ve learned from them. If we view ourselves as a rank (black belt, lakan etc), we find ourselves repeatedly disappointed. We can never really live up to our own expectations of what that rank entails. However, when we recognize ourselves as beginners, we can only improve. This disposition has not only helped me progress as an artist, but ultimately has allowed me to reap more enjoyment from the arts.
