You will not see major improvement in the sword arts if you only practice once a week. You will not reach your goals if they are not set and you are actively working for them.
I had a major realization this week. Today is my day 19 on my 30 for 30 challenge. In the past I lived in a much easier world. Sword was once a week, sometime it involved training outside of class but nothing more than a couple of times at best. Yesterday, things were different. I had the MLK holiday off so while Cindy was at work, I went to the gym for a couple of hours, and then came back for another when she got off.
In the past week some other things have changed too. A couple of weeks ago my fencing coach said that as far as he was concerned I was ready to help coach the class. To me it was a big honor and something I am pretty proud of. But more to the point, it started my mind around, how do I encourage the fencing students to improve? What does it take to get better?
What I finally came to was that no matter how good the class, no matter how hard you work that one or 2 times a week, if you are not putting in your time out of class to improve your improvement will be minimal and slow. Frustration can be a natural part of what we do. I have known plenty of people who came to a class or 2 or 3 expecting to become a sword master after a few weeks, that is just not the way it works.
What hit home this week really solid is this: It is my job to give my students tools that they can use to train outside of class. Whether they do it or not is up to them, but it is my responsibility to give them the tools and to let them use them or not based on their desire to improve. To the same point, I cannot improve as a student of the arts be it Long sword or Olympic Saber, if I am not willing to put the time in outside of class, I will not reach my goals as quickly as I want to get there.
So what does that mean?
Two words: Solo Drills
Last week I started a drill with the Olympic fencers where I gave them 3 minutes to do lunges, retreats and advances. The idea is to keep the feet moving and keep pushing the whole 3 minutes. Form is more important than simply cranking out a bunch of them, but in that 3 minutes it was up to the students to dictate their pace. At the end of it, I had a room full of tired students, so we took a break for water, and did it again. It worked like a charm. So when I had the opportunity to do it in my long sword class, we also did it, and just as before, it wore people out, but was a great drill.
Because I did not want to be that teacher who tells people to do something but can't or will not do it himself, I did the drill at the gym this week. At the end of it, my legs were sore, but I worked through it. I also know that I could have walked through it easily for 3 minutes not pushing myself and I would have met the objectives of the drill. The real question is how bad do I want it, and what am I willing to put in to get there.
I have learned a lot in the last 20 days, but a major thing is this: I will not get in the shape I want to be, or reach my personal goals unless I am willing to put the work in. There may be magical pills to loose weight, or things that you can do to look better, but there is no magic pill that will improve your skill other than hard work and training outside of class. Nothing will get you there unless you are willing to drive it there. It has been a good month, and I have learned over and over again in the last year that this is 100% so.
Maybe the cards are stacked against you, maybe it is not something you can just pull yourself up by your boot straps, but if you want something, if it matters, and you are willing to put the time and energy into it, things you thought were not possible suddenly become possible. In training that means spending time working on things on your own so when you get somewhere where you can practice with someone else, you are ready. Maybe that means eating left overs or picking up extra jobs to make the money to do what you need to to get there. Maybe that means spending 30 minutes a night just doing footwork in your living room, but any energy spent towards your dream and your goal brings it that much closer.
It has been an awesome month, I am just excited to keep this momentum rolling.
