Training Breaks
Realizing the gaps in my training.
I’ve been training in my martial art for over a decade. That’s both a truth and a lie.
I’ve taken a lot of breaks over the years. A Lot.
Most of those are when I had to move from one teacher to another. Most of those moves were because my teach stopped teaching due to injury, family issues, etc.
I’ve had a lot of teachers over the years. And I learned something different from each of them. Not always what I came to my art to do, but still something I could use.
The problem with having so many teachers is they take your rank from your previous teacher as your skill level. While, yes, I did earn my black belt, I don’t think my rank is equal to my skill at all.
I know it isn’t.
I was ranked when I hadn’t trained in six months or a year. Not even practicing on my own. Just straight up not training at all.
Every time I take a break, my skills regress and I come back worse than when I left. I know that’s on me.
My foundation is shaky at best and full of holes. I suck at rolling and break falling. I think it comes as a great shock to my teachers when they finally notice it.
The only way to get better is to practice, so why haven’t I?
In the beginning, it was because rolling hurt. Not in a “my body is sore because this is new” way. No, in a “I’m injuring myself” way.
Six months of rolling and injuring myself has lead to a mental block of being scared to roll. Even now that I’ve learned the proper way to do it, sometimes my brain screams at me in the middle of the roll and I freak out and get hurt. It’s something I absolutely have to work on because, one of these days, it’s not just going to be a bruised knee or shoulder.
Last year lead to another break in training, for obvious reasons. And a switch in teachers to one who’s training style matches my learning style in a way I never actually hoped for.
My skills have grown, but we’re still finding gaps in my training. Part of me wants to scream for him to let me put on my white belt again and just start over from the bottom, but I know that’s a slap in the face to all of my other teachers and previous training.
The only thing I can do now is what I should’ve been doing from the beginning: train like a beginner and practice. And not take another long break.
