After spending the past few months arguing for (part one) and against (part two) the importance of learning more skills, I’d like to question the relevance of either argument. So why does focusing on more or less skills actually miss the point? I’ve noticed that those students who are becoming expert performers no longer come [...]
Archive | Black belt RSS feed for this section
Skills, skills, and more skills (part three)
By Ms Parlour on May 2, 2012 in Black belt, Hapkido techniques, Learning in martial arts, Mental training for martial arts, Motivation for training
Skills, skills and more skills (part two)
By Ms Parlour on March 27, 2012 in Black belt, Hapkido techniques, Learning in martial arts, Motivation for training
Last month I spoke about how knowing a variety of skills can be beneficial to your practice (part one). Today I’d like to play devil’s advocate and argue the contrary. So why are more skills a bad thing? Well it comes down to one simple word, “practice”. If you’re constantly chasing the next skill you [...]
Training beyond black belt (part two)
By Ms Parlour on January 30, 2012 in Black belt, Learning in martial arts, Martial arts etiquette and discipline, Mental training for martial arts, Motivation for training
[part 1] Before Christmas I surveyed some of Chang’s Hapkido Academy (CHA) black belts to discover what keeps them coming back after achieving their black belt. I’ve received over a dozen responses now from black belts across four of our schools, which gives me quite a bit of data to start noticing various recurring themes. [...]
Training beyond black belt (part one)
By Ms Parlour on January 9, 2012 in Black belt, Learning in martial arts, Mental training for martial arts, Motivation for training
To achieve a black belt in Hapkido requires many years of practice. Practicing anything long term requires energy, passion and commitment. But like anything else, our ability to perform a technique effectively will eventually decay – that’s why continued practice, even after achieving black belt is essential if we want to maintain and hopefully improve [...]