Train Consciously. (Or, how to get a Black Belt in half the time!)
This article is aimed at training in the martial arts but really, the concepts discussed apply to learning or practicing anything.
People start training for many reasons but one thing that is common to most people when we start something new, is that we are filled with enthusiasm.
We find something that we love, get excited about it and train hard based on that motivation. We normally make great progress early on. It’s all new, so we learn the easy stuff first and experience a lot of quick successes.
After a while though, the initial surge of motivation fades and progress becomes slower. You are learning more complex things now and the excitement that initially carried you has often disappeared.
It’s easy to find yourself just going through the motions!
When you are learning or attempting to master anything, your progress tends to occur in quick bursts followed by long plateaus. Most of your practice time is spent going over the same things at the same level before we make some breakthrough and we jump up to the next level of skill.
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It’s no wonder that we often switch off and just do the practice.
If you do though, you are cheating yourself out of 90% of the gains and progress that you can make.
It is possible to make almost constant progress and improvement. You can do this by Training Consciously.
You’re probably wondering if I’ve lost it! Of course you are conscious when you’re training.
You’re (probably) ‘conscious’, but most people, most of the time, are not training consciously!
You train consciously by focusing inwardly and within yourself, by concentrating on the technique and the gap between how it should be and how you are doing it. It is about keeping your brain switched on and constantly thinking about how you can improve.
For example, if you are punching the pads/bag, never just try to hit it as hard as you can, but instead focus on making each technique better than the last.
Punch once and take note of how it felt. Where were you strong, where were you weak.
A punch has many elements. The power starts at the floor and travels through your body, each muscle contracting in turn and adding to the power of the punch until all of the power generated reaches your fist and the target.
Does the power travel smoothly or does it escape somewhere along the way. Could there be sticking points holding your power back or could each muscle contract harder and add more power to the technique?
This is of course only one aspect of what you must think about, but the point is that you should constantly rely on the feedback from your body to tell you how you can improve.
If you do this then your progress can be more like a straight line moving upwards.
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Your progress will be faster and you will experience far fewer demoralising plateaus!
You should use this in everything that you do. Sticking with physical training though for an example we could use press-ups. Learn the proper technique (yes, there is a proper technique for press-ups) ie shoulders down, tense the whole body, corkscrew your arms etc and focus on making every single rep perfect. You will get much stronger much quicker not only because you are practicing with perfect form but also because a large part of strength is routed in skill and you will be focused on perfecting the skill!
Tags: focus, Martial arts, power, Psychology, skill, strength, training