Learning the "art of learning" is critical to one's growth as a student of martial arts. Peter Haas offers some tools for improving your deliberate practice skills.
Before I started Hema, I wasn’t particularly athletic. No, scratch that, I wasn’t athletic. I hadn’t been on a sports team since peewee baseball league, and the closest thing resembling prolonged training was a decade prior: “Introduction to Movement for Theater,” a mandatory pre-req at in college.
At the time I was motivated by the thrill of learning something new, particularly because that something had to do with swords. You know, something cool and exciting.
It wasn’t long before the plateau hit. Regardless of how frequently or intensely I trained, studied, or competed, I never felt improvement. The stagnation combined with the waning intellectual stimulation of new materials to learn was debasing; often leading to the classic proclamation of “Why do I even bother?! No matter how hard I try I am not improving!!!”
It was at that moment that I was lucky enough to have a teacher give me some significant advice:
“You need to practice with intent. You need to practice like this is your last opportunity to do that thing ever, so at least die well, you know?”
As it ends up, my training issue wasn’t rooted in failure of effort, but rather in the way I was applying that effort. The remedy was a shift in how I approached practicing: I needed to move from formless repetition to a more structured system of deliberate practice.
In order to practice something with deliberate intent, you need a few things:
A specific, definable goal — The best advice I can give here is to start small and go from there. The broader your goals get, the more difficult it will be to track your progress. If you’re having difficulty drilling down, it might be good to have someone (like a teacher) help you set a series of small, attainable goals so you don’t aim too high and get discouraged.
A way to measure that goal — A log of practice is important to keep track of what you worked on, how long you worked on it, and how many times you practiced it.
Keeping a journal of your practice doesn’t have to be complicated or overly involved, in fact, here is a little worksheet to help you get started: worksheet!
Feedback — As with anything, working in a vacuum isn’t going to help you get better. If you’re serious about your training, the best thing you can do is find a mentor or community to help guide you in your study. This can be difficult, particularly in the isolating era of Covid-19. if you do find yourself alone, be it Covid or geographical, consider making a video recording of yourself. You can review this recording later with a critical eyeand/or submit it to a remote instructor.
Making Time — In order to make progress with anything, we have to dedicate the time and put in the work. That being said, be kind and patient with yourself; life gets busy, life gets in the way. That’s totally natural and will happen more often than not. Be realistic with yourself about the time you can dedicate to practice and adjust your expectations accordingly.
I’ve attached a little worksheet here, with instruction on how to start applying deliberate practice on your own. These tools helped me, as previously nonathletic, non-long-durational training type learn to zoom out and gain a little perspective; feel a little more in control during some of those darker times, and I hope they help you too.