13. Prepare for the Unexpected: Give yourself plenty of time to get there early. Sure enough the day of my test the road was blocked. Had I not given myself a spare 20 minutes to get there I would have been late and super frazzled. Not a good impression to make!

14. Avoiding Sudden Bouts of Amnesia: Know all current as well as previous material like the back of your hand! I can’t stress enough that when you are tired and/or nervous or a combination of both it is amazing how you can forget something you know. Any little doubt that creeps into your mind while performing something can suddenly become full blown amnesia! If you really know your stuff going into the test, even if you momentarily forget, you should be able to gather yourself enough and take some deep breaths to be able to remember. A tip: Forget your brain and let your body remember. If you have done it enough, you should be able to work your way through it.

15. Cramming Doesn’t Cut it-  You can’t cram for a martial arts test. Trying to cram just doesn’t work. Put in the time and effort before you are asked to test so when you go to prepare for your next promotion it is more of a review and refinement of what you already have learned.

16. Endurance Training - It is not enough to be able to execute techniques and forms when well rested. It is a whole different ball game trying to do these things when you are exhausted. Endurance training is critical but very hard for working folks to fit in.  When possible try training for 2-3 hour clips with short breaks to show your body you can go for longer periods.

Hopefully some of these will help some of you prepare for your next test or promotion in the martial arts. No doubt, there are countless other great tips out there.  Feel free to share yours!

Recently I tested for a new sash, or belt, as most schools call it. At my school you only test when asked and testing is the doorway to additional learning. New material is not presented to you in classes until you demonstrate a certain level of proficiency and understanding in the material previously taught. I like this approach a lot - it just makes good common sense.

After a test, there is always a gamut of emotions one can feel. Over the years, mine have ranged from a feeling of disappointment in myself for not doing as well as I felt I should from feeling fairly satisfied that I did as well as I was capable of doing. I always try to remember going into a test these two things:

1. Look at it as a Learning Opportunity
2. Don’t Focus on the Outcome of the Test - Do it for the Experience

Now that I think about it, that approach works for pretty much anything we strive for in life. Testing can be a chance for learning, not just about corrections on the material and execution itself, but a chance to learn more about yourself, how you approach things, react to the stresses and challenges of the test.

So I decided to make a list of the top 10 Lessons I learned when testing in the martial arts …

1. Eat Well and Drink Lots of Water Leading up to the Test – Obvious maybe but I think worth mentioning. No one does well dehydrated or hungry on a test but it is also important to be careful not to eat big meals a few hours before the test. I found even snacking on a banana during a break was too heavy for my sensitive stomach.
2. Pay Attention to your Breathing – Everyone is nervous before a test and often when you first get started. At least that is true for me. It is very obvious that when I’m nervous it impacts my balance, my fluidity and my endurance because my breathing is shallow. Knowing this now from previous experience, I focus on trying to breathe deeply before the test begins. Then, even if I’m nervous when starting, if I continue to focus on regulating my breath that very act seems to calm me down because I am thinking of my breathing instead of my nerves.
3. Comparing Yourself - There is almost always someone performs better than you at something (if not many things). It can be very hard but try not to compare yourself to others – it does not serve you. Unfavorably comparing yourself to others will not only erode your self confidence but will cause feelings of frustration. It can also unnerve you making your own performance less than what it ought to be.
4. More than What Meets the Eye - I learned this one after having the bad judgment to ask my teacher how we could perform well on long tests. He quickly set me straight telling me I don’t know what he looks for on a test. As students of the martial arts we tend to focus on the physical execution of techniques or forms but your teacher, if you are lucky to have such a teacher, is busy absorbing many things including your focus, etiquette, response to praise or criticism, reaction to getting “bested” in a sparring match, endurance, determination etc. Take a look yourself and such things and your test may reveal many more things about you than you realize.
5. Your daily practice habits leading up to your test is far more important than the test itself. Recently, I got a cold bucket of water thrown in my face. It became very clear leading up to the test and on the test itself that I had not practiced certain parts of my curriculum enough.
6. Use the test experience as a blue print for future training. Do all you can to absorb the corrections you receive along with assessing yourself – what did you do well and what could you have done better? Then make a plan to work on the things that you didn’t do well and then stick to the plan. Without a solid foundation the building will eventually fall.
7. If you make a mistake during the test, let it go and move on.  Beating yourself up will just distract you from what you should be doing in the present and likely lead to additional errors.
8. Controlling your emotions is every bit as important as controlling your body. Personally I try to take on a somewhat stoic demeanor during all of the physical parts of testing. I just find it easier to simply focus on the business at hand.
9. Don’t spend energy thinking of what is still to come on the test or how much longer it might be. For me, this can be one of the biggest dangers since, as we continue to advance, our tests can be very long. It will zap my energy if thinking “oh I won’t make it I still have xyz to do”. It can become a self fulfilling prophecy. Take it one step at a time. Your brain can convince you that you are ready to quit before you body really is done. In fact, I’ve heard telling yourself “I am strong” can prove helpful when feeling ready to give up (or fall down).
10. Don’t make excuses for yourself or to yourself. No one wants to hear it and it just makes you look bad. After all, if you can’t own what you did, then how can you fix it?
11. If you do really well on the test or get praised by your teacher don’t brag about it or preen. This also makes you look bad. Accept praise humbly and keep it in perspective.
12. Try to remember to have fun with the experience. It is not life or death. I find it helpful to go back to my reasons for wanting to practice in the first place and keep in mind it was never because I wanted to achieve a certain belt. As my teacher says, just practice… and the rest takes care of itself.

Ok, that was 12 but whose counting? Have any of your own testing for rank experiences you’d like to share?

]]> http://www.kungfu4women.com/martial-arts/top-10-lessons-learned-when-testing-for-rank-in-the-martial-arts/feed/ http://www.kungfu4women.com/martial-arts/artial-arts-wordle/ http://www.kungfu4women.com/martial-arts/artial-arts-wordle/#comments Fri, 11 Dec 2009 15:32:11 +0000 Dragonfly http://www.kungfu4women.com/?p=342 Just having some fun here. Check it out…

Martial Arts Wordle

Honestly, I was ok with it as long as no one decided to get out of the car and get any closer.(I had quickly formulated a bit of a plan though just in case they did - but luckily they gave up on me and left after a bit).  Surely, my complete disregard to his obvious ire just riled him up some more but really! As I thought some more about what happened as I walked back to my car I was incredulous, not because he thought what I was doing was so strange (it does look odd and may have even mistook it for some form of worship) but regardless what should he care? Why so little tolerance of others?

We fear what we don’t understand I suppose. But that shouldn’t stop me. I’ll continue to go there and practice whenever I like. People need to become more tolerant of the differences between us.  Hiding what I love to do and need to practice won’t help that. Maybe, if my friend decides to stop by again in the future, and I am done practicing, I will walk over and try to have a civil conversation. Maybe at the end of it he will come to realize I was doing no harm and that his anger was misplaced. Maybe not….but without trying nothing changes.

Retreat View

There were points when we would spend time with others walking or sitting in meditation outside in complete silence. If you think about it, how often do people spend time together as a group without having the need to constantly be saying something. I found those moments to be a rare pleasure.

Knowing you are all there for a common purpose, sharing an experience without exchanging any words is a refreshing change from every day life. It was in those quiet moments when it felt like it was a true retreat experience for me – a chance to recharge. The unhurried pace, the utter lack of the usual demands and pressures. Even being told when to move on to the next thing meant leaving the worry about time and schedules to someone else. I got to just ‘be”. That was a gift.

Fully engaged with a heightened awareness is the only way to describe one particular experience I had on that retreat. I can’t get into the details unfortunately, but suffice it it say that it was an eye opening experience.

If you’ve never gone a retreat like this I strongly recommend that you do. It is wonderful experience and doing it for the weekend really helps you to “get it” in a way that just a few hours outside does not.

Happy Trails.

That last line really caught my attention,

“They made a commitment that that’s as far as they can go.”

Wow, how often do we do just that? Without ever being consciously aware of it we put up mental barriers and then tell ourselves this is as far we can go. And so we find ourselves in a self fulfilling prophecy. The reality of the situation and our perception of it have little to do with one another.

It all boils down to our beliefs. If we think we are not capable, we are not.  But is the opposite true? If we think we are capable, are we? Well once upon a time when I was a little girl I was convinced I could fly if I only tried hard enough.  I would go up high and then jump over and over again. As you might guess, it didn’t quite work out as I had hoped but one thing is for certain, our chances of success increase dramatically when we think we can.

What we perceive to be true may in fact, be completely false.  There was an interesting study done along the same lines in India.  When they train their elephants, they take a baby elephant and tie it to a large tree with an iron chain.  Then they start reducing the size of the chain and cutting down the tree. Eventually, you can tie the elephant which now nearly fully grown with a flimsy rope to small tree but the elephant is unable to escape. It’s made a commitment in its body-mind that it’s imprisoned! That is a pretty powerful example of how perception and reality can have little in common.

How often in our lives are we held prisoner by our own beliefs?  How often in our martial arts training do we tell ourselves we cannot go any further and so limit our own abilities? Do we commit to failure?  Surrender needlessly when the reality is we are capable of so much more?

Over the past few months, my confidence in my abilities has been waning.  I keep telling myself I need to practice more and that is true. Yet maybe, I need to tune into my inner voice. How much of my recent lack of development has to do with practice and how much of it has to do with my growing belief that I am just not good enough? Am I that fish that swims to the edge and returns because it thinks it can go no further? Responding to a barrier that only exists in my mind?

I will think of those fish next time I am convinced I have reached my limitations and try to remember that perception and reality can bear little resemblance to one another.

Keep swimming!

My teacher’s advice for this tends to be this: Pick one thing and work on that. Often training that one thing will automatically raise other skills along with it.  Now I do not think he means practice this one thing to the exclusion of all else.  But he does mean to pick one thing and really focus on it.  This is good advice. I need to take it to heart more but sometimes it is difficult to narrow it down to that one most important thing but I have decided and now need the discipline to stick with it.

And so, as I find with virtually everything in my martial arts training, I can take this idea of picking out one thing and really working on it into my life. What one thing in my everyday life needs the most improvement? If I work on that, will other things naturally improve along with it? I think that one is for certain.

Better get busy.

Taking this to more general philosophical level for a moment here,  I tend to subscribe the philosophy that  “the easy way is the hard way and the hard way is the easy way”.  Yet while I gave this more thought I also thought about general statements I hear my martial arts teacher such as “What is wrong with everyone having their own opinion?” And , inwardly I quickly agree. Yet, in this situation I can’t help but think sometimes you need to take the more difficult road. If I am really being my “true self”, then that self is not the type of person who lets remarks like this pass in silent consent. Now I’m not saying I start any sort of argument. I simply let it be known that I do not agree with this way of thinking.

Is this a social faux pas or is it an opportunity to introduce another way of thinking? How does positive change ever take place in society if we all just stand mute by due to concern over social niceties? Now, I don’t actually care to debate the point with people like this because my experience is they will not change their minds on their way of thinking any more likely than I am to come around to their way of thinking. Also,  I do indeed subscribe the philosophy that you can’t change others…only your reactions to them. Yet, with a little negative social push back, perhaps people such as this might think twice before uttering these racial slurs in my presence or others. Perhaps with a firmly stated “I couldn’t disagree with you more” statement others might even chime in “me either”.

Now, I have to tell you. That is the nice version of what I’d really like to say to such people. What I really want to ask of this regular church goer is where in the scriptures does it say “love all mankind… unless his race, religion or creed differs from yours then by all means feel free to hate and spead that hate around!”.  Nope, pretty sure it doesn’t say that anywhere.

And so perhaps I will be stuck with a reputation of being a bit difficult at family gatherings. Yet, what I really want is to utter something that triggers just a glimmer of enlightenment. Plant the smallest of seeds that if we are all indeed one and to hate another is to hate yourself. After all, change doesn’t happen over night. Step by step.

What would you do in that situation? What is your own personal philosophy towards predjudice of any kind? Speak or hold your tongue? Please leave me your thoughts.

It got me thinking about my own former addiction with cigarrettes. Almost 10 years ago I used smoke about a pack a day for more years than I care to recall.  I was really addicted both physically and mentally to those damn cigarettes. Then one day I found myself getting up from dinner out with friends so I could go outside and have my smoke. More and more that was happening as people were really starting to frown on smoking even when sitting in a smoking section if there was one.  So it didn’t matter if it was 20 degrees outside - out I would go disrupting a nice little get together to feed my addiction. Looking back my non smoking friends must have thought me ridiculous. Or ridiculously weak. What woke me up though was the fact that I realized cigarrettes were in control of me - they were the boss. I was a slave to my addiction. That is when I made up my mind to stop. Of course, I knew it was bad for my health and that was always in my guilty mind as I puffed away but that is what an addiction typically is isn’t it? Doing something despite the fact that you know it is harmful to you and doing it anyway.

So I quit and it was HARD. Really hard. I couldn’t imagine getting through the day much less the rest of my life without cigarettes. So I took it literally one minute at a time. When I got the urge to smoke, I delayed that feeling by exercising.  Often I would find that if I could delay the urge and put my mind on something else, it would pass. I was also replacing a bad habit with a good one. When I couldn’t exercise because I was at work, for example, I constantly had a bottle of water at my side and I drank tons of it. I actually lost weight instead of gaining it. This brought me into a whole new healthier life style and about a month later I took my first martial arts class and that was truly the end of my addiction.

You see now I was this person who was fit and health minded. Now I was amongst people who strived for self discipline not self indulgence. I became someone very different from the smoker I used to be. I quit and stayed quit, unlike my husband who did not make lifestyle changes, and slipped back a number of times. To this day, he still craves a smoke sometimes. I can honestly say I never even think about it.

Certainly, my kung fu classes helped because on a very basic level I would not have been able to keep up if I was still puffing away and I really wanted to do my best.  However, back then I didn’t meditate much and had I had this tool as well I know it would have really helped. Meditation helps train your mind to be in more control over your thoughts - exactly what the addicted person needs to stay off the drugs, alchohol whatever once the physical cravings have passed.  Sitting in meditation and working through those urges by focusing on the breath would been another way to work through those urges until they no longer held the same power. My breathing exercises also showed me how much damage had been done and how much rebuilding was necessary.

Martial arts can be helpful on so many unexpected levels. I really admire the woman who had the courage to ask the question in class and I immediately had a deep respect for the transformation she is clearly working towards undergoing. I have little doubt that her chances for success are greatly increased thanks to her martial arts training. Good for her!

Have you kicked an addiction? If so, how did you do it? Please share your story.

Well first off, I think we have to get in touch with our own beliefs and priorities. For me this this started out with identifying what things in my life had real value and meaning versus what thought and activities served no real purpose. Then tossing out most of those non essential activities and replacing them with ones that served me better.

Perhaps some of those things we do, are just to please others. Generally, speaking I think little good ever comes from doing something strictly to please someone else. Eventually don’t we learn to resent or dislike it? Maybe even ultimately rebel against it? Best to find some common ground - some give and take rather than completely setting ourselves aside just to make someone else happy. 

Having said that, once one has a firm grasp of what truly makes them happy (and unhappy) they can start to evaluate what things they are doing that is congruent with their own goals and beliefs. Just as an example, over the past 6 months to a year I have gotten back in touch with the fact that I enjoy writing. Yet, because it is not my profession, it never really ocurred to me I had anything of value to share or that I had the talent to do it. But recently, I have started to think differently about that. Perhaps I do. Perhaps we all do. I recalled how much I enjoyed telling and writing stories. People seemed to enjoy those stories and my mom always used to say I should do something with “that”. Whatever “that” is.

You see, I don’t think if not for the time I have spent meditating, practicing and taking the time to sit and enjoy nature if I would have found that piece of me again. But I am glad I rediscovered it and recently I have decided to pursue something that I have always wanted to try my hand at which is writing a book.  Why not? What have I got to lose? I even strongly suspect, that this is part of the journey I am suppose to taking. That this decision and the act of doing it is part of my “reaching my true potential.”  I guess over the next months or years I will find this out.

Some may automatically assume I will measure my success or failure in this writing venture based on whether or not I get the book published. Then if I do, the next “test” will be how many copies it sells. But I already know that this is not where I will get the value from the process.

Just one step toward reaching that “true potential”. But then again, that is all we can do. Take one step at a time and enjoy the ride along the way. Never forgetting that it is “the enjoyment of the ride”, with all of its ups and downs, that is the whole point.