COMMITMENT
Starting a Martial Art is hard, which ever art you do. Committing to stick with it is even harder, and then staying long enough to get something really meaningful out of it is harder again. Committing to Martial Arts training it hard, it hurts both mentally and physically but you can achieve so much with some focussed effort.
I know you're hurting now, but in time you'll realize what you've achieved (extra points for the movie reference)
SACRIFICING OTHER THINGS
Training Martial Arts in todays world requires the student to make choices, hard choices and choices that will have an effect on the student's level of progress and sense of achievement.
We are all time pressured, whether you are at primary school and have a full timetable of extra-curricular activities; whether you are a teenager with the pressures of national academic examinations; whether you are an adult with a job and a family - and making the time to commit to regular after school or after work activities is really hard, it requires you to give up some other things.
The student might have to give up on some of these, amongst others:
Another regular 'club' they attend
Watching TV after school or work
Relaxing at home with family
Socialising with friends
DIY
Or, perhaps, more accurately, the student will have to make the time for all those things rather than waste time doing nothing like looking at Tik Tok for example.
"Don't waste your time or TIME will waste you" (extra points for the song reference)
SENSE OF ACHIEVEMENT
You can order any belt colour you like online nowadays, and it is super easy to buy the martial arts uniform and you can wear your new uniform and belt colour for your Instagram post. But what does that mean? It means it's meaningless.
Martial Arts training is a meaningful activity, the hard work you put in, the energy you expend, the questions you ask of yourself, the criticism you receive, the corrections you work on, the results you achieve have positive long lasting effects on your life, your body and the people around.
It is a real sense of achievement when you receive your grading result and you have been successful and your progress is recognised, because the build up to that point has been hard work, physically and mentally. Would you feel the same if the activity was easy, or the standards were so low that every person could achieve the qualification without any effort?
CONGRATULATIONS
9 people, who started martial arts training with Banstead TaeKwon-Do in 2021 after all the previous life restrictions and lockdowns, have recently graded for the first time (well, second time for one student). Their efforts in the meaningful activity they have chosen to spend time in, sacrifice other things for and commit to have been rewarded with a new belt colour but, more important the efforts have been rewarded with a real sense of achievement. The classes are hard, the achievement is real.
We have 8 new students passing their first grading, and 1 student passing their second grading: we have eight new 9th kups, and one new 8th kup. WELL DONE TO YOU ALL.
So these people in the photo above are my most RECENT set of Yellow Tags, but 12 years ago I took a picture of my FIRST set of Yellow tags:
Above photo: 3rd from left is Matt Thomas, who became our first home grown Blackbelt. And 4th from left is Josey Killner who is also one of our 1st degree Blackbelts and currently working towards her 2nd Degree and attends every class.
CONGRATULATIONS to all our new grading passers, if you didn't manage it this time then the next grading will be in the first quarter of 2022 so get working hard towards that.
If you like the idea of Committing, Working Hard and having a sense of Achievement then please get in contact to come along to try TaeKwon-Do and my Martial Arts training.
-------------------------------------------------- James Davis 5th Degree International Instructor & Examiner Banstead TaeKwon-Do m: 07850 438 898 e: james@bansteadtkd.co.uk w: www.bansteadtkd.co.uk
i: www.instagram.com/bansteadtaekwondo/ f: www.facebook.com/BansteadTKD/ t: twitter.com/bansteadtkd --------------------------------------------------