Yesterday I had one of the best martial arts classes in the couple of decades I’ve been training. Solid “wow” from beginning to end. I learned new things. The class was challenging, fun, and it turned my perceptions upside-down. It was the kind of class that fires you up and makes you excited about training.
The thing about training in martial-arts long-term (or training in anything I would guess) is that those "get you fired up" classes become few and far-between. After the first (weeks/months/years) when everything is new and exciting, and it's cool that you're learning to do what you see in movies (ish), it gets harder. Months and years of very similar classes, with the revelations and "cool new thing!" going from 2-3 per class to 2-3 per month, to "just be thankful when it happens." So finding ways to get fresh eyes is good. In a way. From new approaches to training, to a new art altogether.
I've heard people divide "phases" of training up differently. Right now I'm thinking of how the "learning like drinking from a fire hose" phase is very different from the "march through the desert" phase. Those are really different kinds of training. Both valuable. Learning quickly can give you basic self-defense skills. It fires you up and gets you hooked to love what you’re doing. It gives you some principles of your art. It keeps you engaged before you learn internal methods to stay engaged. It’s FUN.
The later years...THOSE give you staying power. Plateaus, walls, pits, pain, frustration, exhaustion, boredom, and every excuse your brain can rationalize, it's all there to overcome. So spicing up those years can be a way to tackle obstacles. But relying on new and fun can be deceptive. Distracting. At least they have been for me. There were times when I got “bored” with my curriculum, and would suffer through routine training hanging my interest on going from cool seminar to new weapon study to whatever seemed interesting while I slogged through required classes...missing the whole point.
The real work of that time, that “seen it, done it, can we PLEASE move on?” time, I am starting to see, is in the basics. In incremental improvement, and small revelations. Returning to class when your motivation is gone and instead of suffering through it, finding joy in it. Finding those (sometimes tiny) bits of progress. Realizing over and over again that you’re still a beginner, usually just when you think you’ve “got it.” Finding the fun in training under those conditions is where the sublime happens.
I think both types of experience are important, and it's apparently possible to do both concurrently. Appreciating and enjoying the wonder of the new and unexpected, as well as the internal changes that come from regular work over long years. Those aren't mutually-exclusive. The seminars and new arts and new weapons and rejuvenating cool stuff...those are great. But I get more out of those if they aren’t there to “keep me going” in the day-to-day. I can be there and enjoy starting something totally new entirely for itself. In the regular routine of training, I don’t have to be “reminded” of why I train. That is fun and awesome in a totally different way.
Something a teacher once asked me, that I’ve pondered for YEARS, is why I felt that training had to be a series of obstacles. As if if I wasn’t miserable, I wasn’t working hard enough or “doing it right.” She was insightful and totally correct. Obstacles and misery felt like “real” training. Which led me to set up a lot of misery and obstacles...which ironically prevented a lot of actual training. (sigh) I think recently I’ve decided to overcome the obstacle of creating obstacles. My original reasons for practicing martial arts are mostly gone now, they don’t apply. But I still love it. Sometimes reasons don’t matter. This practice is one of my great passions in life. The new/cool/awesome parts and the long-term familiar parts. Not needing one to keep the other, enjoying both.
I'm not sure what phases come after those. Maybe I’ll find out.
