I’d like to share with you a couple of important discoveries I’ve made with regard to teaching martial arts, which may be translated into other areas as well. An important lesson is that you are not good at anything you need to do in your conscious mind. When you first learned to tie your shoes, you probably made some mistakes, and went slow and sloppy. Then you internalized the skill, and now with the mere thought “tie my shoes” you do it fast and nearly perfectly every time. Overthinking what you are doing will get in your way.

Cognitive psychology has a model where you begin at the level of unconscious incompetance – you don’t even know what you don’t know. Then you reach the level of conscious incompetance – you know that there is something you don’t know or can’t do. Next is conscious competence – you can do the skill as long as you are immediately focused on performing it, and it requires some thought. Mastery comes at the level of unconscious competence – the level where you perform the skill without conscious thought. So ho do we more rapidly get people to a level of unconscious competence?

Here are a few methods I’ve had a great deal of success with:

1. Multipart drill-stacking: This is where I take a number of movements I want to teach and string them into a continuous drill. Think kata or multi-step sparring. I teach the beginning of the exercise – no more than 3-5 movements. I have the students practice this until they are just about to “get it”. At this point they may be at a level of conscious competence. Then I add the next part of the drill and do the same thing.

What I have found, is that the student will begin focusing on the second part of the drill and will have to relegate the first part of the drill to the unconscious. It takes a little practice to learn when to push the next part of the drill. I have taught people very long segments of movements in a single session with near perfect retention using this method. Not only that, but the beginning movements start to smooth out on their own.

It’s important to stop adding sections if the previous sections get sloppy or mixed up. Then it’s time to go back and fix what’s broken.

2. Single session repetition with breaks: The unconscious mind takes time to process new information. This processing goes on even when we are thinking about something else. The basic way to do this method is to practice the same skills multiple times in the same session, while taking breaks and working on something else in between.

Let’s say you start your class with a kicking drill. After that you may move on to punching for 15 minutes. Then, you’d do the same kicking drill again, perhaps with another break and then end with the same kicking drill. An added benefit here is that you give a group of muscles some time to rest. Muscle fatigue can lead to a loss of coordination.

3. Add a distracting stimulus: A training drill I remember fondly was standing around in a circle practicing footwork while two or three people held medicine balls. After each foot movement, whoever was holding a medicine ball would throw it to someone else in the circle. This was an awesome awareness drill, and made people force the footwork into the back of their mind, while they tried to not get knocked down by a 13 pound medicine ball.

Other things you can do is add flashing lights, or shut the lights off, play really bad music in the background, a you name it.

These are just a few of the methods we use to get people good very fast.

John Moore Sensei

Courtesy

Martial Arts practice begins and ends with courtesy. At the beginning of our practice we “bow in” with a short ceremony, at the end we “bow out”. The ceremony is spiritual but not religious, and is a very important part of the training.

The importance of the ceremony is that we are shifting from our every day state of mind, to one conducive to practice. We are symbolically wiping off the feet of our mind so we don’t drag in the mental mud we’ve accumulated during the day.

We practice three bows. At the beginning of practice we bow to the kamiza – the traditional seat of the spirits at the front of the class. We hold in mind a sense of respect for those who died before us so that we may practice our art. We then bow to the sensei (teacher) of the class and hold in mind the thought – please guide us in our practice so we may grow. We then bow together and hold in mind the thought – please may we all learn safely together today, help each other, and grow as a community of warriors.

If some religious or other doctrine you practice prevents you from bowing, that is absolutely fine.

The bow is not a sign of supplication, but a sign of mutual respect. Nobody is bowing down to anyone, we are bowing together to show mutual respect. This is a gesture similar to a military salute or a handshake, but the importance is what you hold in mind during the bow.

During class, it is traditional to bow to the sensei after he gives some instruction. Again, this is not supplication but a symbol that says, “thanks for sharing”. The sensei bows back as a symbol stating, “thank you for listening.” Respect is always mutual.

When working with a partner or partners during class, it is traditional to begin and end with a short bow. We create a mindset of mutual respect and safety prior to working with one another, and say thanks after we practice.

Our classes are significantly less formal than in many other martial arts schools. There is no, “yes sir”, “no sir” or snapping to attention. This formality generally comes from schools where the original teachers came from the military and brought some of those traditions into their practice. Some people enjoy the formality and tradition, and that’s fine, but we don’t practice that way.

The Sensei

Sensei, loosely translates to “teacher” in Japanese and we generally use it in this context. It is better translated as “one who has gone before” as in a person with more experience.

As a title, in Japan, it is not reserved for martial arts teachers. Sensei has the same meaning as Doctor for someone who has achieved an advanced degree. If you were in College, you might refer to your teacher as “Doctor” X or “Professor” Y. This is the meaning of sensei.

In Japanese, the title is placed after the proper name. John Moore Sensei is correct, while Sensei John Moore seems correct in English but would confuse a Japanese speaker. We place the title after the name.

In class, you would traditionally refer to the teacher as “sensei”. If there were more than one teacher present you could refer to a teacher by their family name then title, “Moore Sensei”. It is up to you how you would like to refer to the teacher (as long as it is respectful). You may call our teachers by their given name. It is our tradition that the student decides when it is appropriate to refer to the teacher as sensei.

We currently do not use any other titles for our teachers. A lot of American martial arts teachers appropriate Japanese titles, or make them up. Some systems, like Bujinkan, have many levels of teaching and ranks. We choose to keep things simple.

We purposefully do not use the title “master” or any derivative, and do not translate the title sensei that way. It is our philosophy that nobody is ever a master of anything, that learning never ends, and the best teachers in the world continue to evolve.