This week’s post is about how martial arts training can help you navigate all the chaos life can throw at you.
People will think you’re silly for doing something that looks like fighting and not doing it professionally, but there’s so much more to training than that. It builds confidence not just for self defense, but for anything life will throw at you.
Building Confidence
The funny thing about this question from Quora, is I wound up bringing up the concept of live training in a conversation I had with friends over the weekend. Mind you, it doesn’t have to be Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu but there should be an aspect of live training in whatever art you choose to train in.
First, let’s look at the Quora question and answer:
How does Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu help build confidence and improve self-defense skills?
The live training is where it helps.
Any art that has some sort of live sparring will help with your confidence and self-defense skills. I have been fortunate to train in Isshin-Ryu karate and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu for 30 years, plus my high-school years, where I did American kickboxing (long pants kickboxing LOL). The live sparring is what helped my confidence and trained my mind to solve problems when things get rough.
Not just an attacker, and maybe I’m not always calm, but to focus quickly on the task at hand comes from live training/sparring.
Drilling technique helps build muscle memory, but being put in scenarios where you have to apply it is what helps with confidence and self-defense.
Not Always About Winning
The part about martial arts that doesn’t get spoken about enough is the lifelong learning aspect of it.
Everyone wants to get a black-belt, or become a “Master”, but the fact of the matter is when you hit that milestone, you realize that’s just the beginning. A popular phrase in the jiu-jitsu community is “you either win or you learn.” That applies to everything in life, sometimes you make bad choices and lose.
Live training, sparring is the practice area where you get to practice winning and losing. So you know what can bring you closer to wins when it counts and prevent losing, or at least survive. It’s a controlled chaos to help you for when the real thing comes.
The lesson in the losing experience, is so that you don’t repeat those mistakes.
Hopefully, you learned enough from it to navigate away from the chaos that comes with being a human being.
The lessons that come from those sessions apply to the dojo, the mats, and life in general.
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