How Instructors Can Improve Their Martial Arts Abilities!

One of the most shocking things in the martial arts is how instructors don’t do advanced training. By this I mean, after a certain amount of training, they never get any more instruction for themselves. The idea here is that they know everything, and all they have to do now is polish it, perfect it, and time will be their teacher.

The idea, of course, is ridiculous. Yes, time will improve a person, but what will improve a person faster is getting more data. Imagine a computer which never inputs any further data and you will understand what I mean.

So you need sources of fresh info if you are going to become improved, and you need to make mental connections with other arts. For instance, if you’ve got a black belt in Kenpo, a course in Aikido is going to open your mind up. At the end of every Kenpo technique, once you understand what Aikido really is, you can create additional techniques.

And, if you’ve got some good hard Kung Fu, the next step is exploring the internal schools of Kung fu. Aside from improving your understanding of the martial arts, you now have more to offer students and prospective students. This is going to result in better quality of instruction, and it’s going to be a lot of fun besides.

Now, let’s say you don’t have access to an aikido school, or an Internal Arts school, what is the solution? Well, you read the periodicals and scour the net, and this goes a long way. But the real key to improvement is in DVD lessons.

You can pick up a DVD on an entire art, sometimes for as little as ten bucks a DVD, and you can sit in the comfort of your armchair and get up and practice to your hearts content. I used to buy so many DVDs at my martial arts supply store the owner gave me an automatic, good customer, ten per cent discount. And I would spend my late evenings and weekends learning new arts until I had them totally cold.

When I walked into my kung fu school on a Monday morning, I always had a kettle full of great ideas. Students were always wondering how I cam up with so many great ideas, and they were always blown out by the twists and interpretations I could give the same old same old forms and techniques. I tell ya, when people were bowing to me, they were bowing to superior knowledge by disk, and that can happen to any instructor!

Now, when you pick out a Martial Arts DVD course, make sure it deals with an entire art, and not just an overview, an overview is nothing more than icing, it’s not the cake, there is rarely any meat to this kind of DVD. And, make sure you pick up a new art/course every month, you need to make a project out of this, and not a whim. Martial Arts DVDs are one of the best investments that I know of, I tell you, if you are an instructor, it is imperative that you keep improving yourself, and DVDs are a blast to do.