Welcome to Episode #111 of the Fight for a Happy Life podcast, “How to Make Martial Arts Techniques Work.”
You see a move. You learn a move. You try a move…
…but it doesn’t work! ARGH! So frustrating.
The truth is, sooner or later, we all hit a wall in our training. We all get to the point where we have to decide whether a technique is possible or impossible. But what if we’re wrong?
Before you give up on those so-called “fancy” moves, let me give you some advice—no technique works in the beginning! Heck—forget the beginning, even if you drill a technique over and over for years, you still might have a problem pulling it off for real.
But don’t give up! In this episode, I will share the six stages of learning that you must pass through to truly master a technique. No, it’s not an easy path to follow, but it’s the only way to get you where you want to go.
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How to Make Martial Arts Techniques Work
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TRANSCRIPT
Howdy, and welcome to episode #111 of Fight for a Happy Life, the show that believes even a little martial arts makes life a whole lot better.
My name is Ando of Happy Life Martial Arts, and I’m here today to tell you a story– a story about the very first question I ever asked in a martial arts class.
I had trained on my own in my garage for a couple of years, but when I finally ventured out and signed up for a formal martial arts class, this was the first question that came to my mind. And it’s a question that I kept repeating for several years. And it’s all on the topic of–
How do you make a martial arts technique really work?
Perhaps you’ve had a similar question in your mind. You go to class, you see a cool technique, maybe a fancy technique. Your instructor seems to be able to do it, but you can’t and you want to.
What’s up with that?
Well, let me get to the story and then I think I can give you a solution, a pathway at least, to making your techniques work.
So the story, and I believe this was probably the first class, literally, the first class that I was standing in the Dojang, Taekwondo school. The teacher, a nice guy, and a very skillful guy, I believe it was probably his normal routine when a new student comes in to demonstrate some of his skill, to impress upon the student, Here’s why I’m the teacher.
In this case, the teacher would either take another student, or in this case me, and turn them into a puppet. He took my hand and grabbed my fingers, grabbed the palm and twisted my wrist, made me go down, flipped it over, goose neck, chicken wing, finger lock, arm lock.
He just had me going up and down, up and down like a puppet. And of course, it was all very cool. It was impressive and skillful. And when he let me go, he had that look on his face like, Impressive, huh?
Now, I was not trying to be a wise guy. Well, maybe 10% being a wise guy, but 90% actual interest. I just had to ask, Yeah, but how did you get my hand? I understand that if you’re grabbing my fingers and you twist them around multiple ways, I’m going to react to that. I got that.
But if I’m punching you, how did you catch my hand to begin with? And he looked at me with a very straight face and he just said… That comes later. Someday I’ll show you. That was his answer.
Now, in fairness, I’m a brand new student, so if there is a secret to catching someone’s hand out of mid-air in a real fight, why show me? Earn trust, pay your dues. I’m on board with that. So okay, that’ll come later, I just have to have a little bit of faith.
Now as it happens, my time in the Taekwondo school came to an end before I ever learned how to catch somebody’s hand out of mid-air to then turn them into a puppet. I ended up eventually in a Kung Fu school and I ran into the same problem. Loads of difficult, dare I say, fancy moves in the Kung Fu school. All the things that people say don’t work in real fights.
Wrist locks, sweeps, lockups of various kinds, hip throws. And I couldn’t get any of them to work, right? And, as a matter of fact, perhaps this was being a bit of a wise guy, but I was older. I even at some point put up a challenge to my classmates and I said, If any one of you can get a hip throw on me, a legitimate hip throw, while we’re free sparring, I’ll give you $100.
I believe it’s also the case I raised that to $1000 at some point. $1000 to anyone who can drop me with a hip throw. Now, to be fair, I wasn’t hip throwing anybody either. I couldn’t do it either. But that didn’t change the fact that we were being taught hip throws and we were expected to be able to do hip throws.
I’ve mentioned before that early on in my martial arts journey, I was a bit of a technique collector. I had notebooks full of techniques, cool moves, the stuff I wanted to do. But I couldn’t and it was very frustrating.
I’m sure for you too, if you have a similar problem, you show up, you do what you’re supposed to do, you work hard, you practice, you ask questions, but it’s not enough. You still can’t get the moves to work. And for me, the real slap in the face came when I was working with kids.
Maybe when you’re working with adults, you can get away with saying, Well, this guy’s bigger and that guy’s stronger, that guy’s a higher rank. So of course I can’t get these things to work. But when I worked out with kids, and I would kind of slip in an attempt to throw them and surprise them, maybe delight them with something a little fancier, I would also be fumbling around to try to get that hand or get to that right position.
So even with kids, I couldn’t do it. And that infuriated me.
At some point, that came out as anger, like I’m resenting this whole training methodology because none of this stuff you say it works, works. My Kung Fu teacher said something that I believe he said many times, but the first time I really heard it was on this one particular occasion where he told me–
First you learn how to work Kung Fu, then you learn how to make Kung Fu work.
Ah, this to me was the exact same advice or sentiment from my Taekwondo teacher when he said, that comes later. Which now told me that there are two separate projects when it comes to making your techniques work. Two completely different projects–
One project is collecting some moves, get some techniques. The second project is how to apply them, to make them work.
One does not necessarily lead to the other. Just because you keep learning techniques doesn’t mean you can do them. At some point, you have to shift your mental gears from learning what to do to learning how to do it. It’s a big shift. But if you do it, I think there are rewards.
I know I’m only speaking from my own personal experience, of course, but I did change my mentality. I stopped writing techniques down. I already knew I had too many. I had thousands of techniques written down, but who cares? I couldn’t do any of them. Not really.
So I dedicated myself then to the second project, to making the Kung Fu work. And how do you do that? Experimenting. You have to fail. You have to make yourself vulnerable, put yourself back into a beginner’s mindset, just like you did the first time you walked in and said, What do I do? To starting over and saying, Well, now how do I do it? So you in effect become a white belt again.
But I do believe there’s a happy ending here because if you do this right work, if you follow what I’m going to prescribe here, I do believe you can make pretty much any technique work. Those fancy moves that people love to hate on, myself included at some point, I was a hater, I became a lover, a much happier person because I saw that these things were possible.
These techniques were passed down for a reason. They do work if you do the right kind of work. So that’s what I want to share.
I’ve got six stages of work you have to do to make your martial arts techniques work.
And I’ll tell you right up front, these stages can overlap, it could be a little sloppy. You might have to go back and repeat certain steps. We’ll get into all that, but they’re all necessary. I don’t think you can be the best martial artist you can be without moving through all six of these stages.
Ready?
First stage to make your martial arts techniques work is the technical stage.
That’s when you are a beginner, you walk into your school, and you’re really just asking, what do I do? He’s got a hand on my throat, what do I do? He’s grabbing my wrist, what do I do? He’s trying to punch me in the head, what do I do?
That’s when you start learning your first moves, maybe your first combinations, your first forms. And frankly, this is the easiest of all six stages. Absolutely, especially now in the age of the internet, where you can see the greatest martial artists alive performing for you, you can learn a million different moves very quickly. Information is cheap nowadays.
However, here’s the mistake…
You hear that knowledge is power, but that’s a lie, and I’ve talked about that before. Knowledge is not power. Action is power. Informed action is superpower.
So yes, this first stage of technical information, learning techniques is crucial. We have to know something, but it’s only the first step towards the technique, technical skill that you want, to be able to pull off your fancy moves.
So information alone, no good, which pushes you to the second stage. Once somebody tells you what to do, you get that information.
The next stage is physical.
Right off the bat, your technique’s not working. So you think, wait a minute, I already know what to do. I just need to do this better, which opens the door to what I would call hard skills.
The hard skills category would include increasing your speed, increasing your strength, improving your flexibility, developing your coordination. In short, all of the conditioning that a martial artist goes through.
You sweat it out to build your body up to be faster and stronger and more capable of pulling off all of those cool moves that you’ve already seen. And the good news here is, yes, that will give you better results. I’m not here to argue against being faster and stronger and more flexible. Condition yourself, be in the best shape you possibly can. You will improve and you will have better luck landing your fancy techniques.
However, you’re going to hit a wall because if someone’s faster, stronger, more flexible, better coordinated, more experienced than you are, they won’t work anymore. So maybe you can throw around an eight-year-old, good for you, but not someone who is a superior physical specimen, which is going to push you to the next stage, right?
We go from the technical to the physical.
The next stage is the mechanical.
That’s where we start diving deep into the details, to see those little things that you missed the first time around. This is where you try to pick up as many tips and tricks as possible.
You believe that the answer to your success lies in these little tiny details, like where exactly did you grab? I saw that you grabbed, but where exactly did you grab? You start paying more attention to the precise angle of your effort.
You pay attention a little bit more to the exact distance you need. You pay a little more attention to the pressure that you need to exert. You pay a little more attention to how your body is moving.
What kind of movement? Is it efficient? This might lead you into a study of anatomy and pressure points and meridians.
However deep you want to go, you’re trying to get down to those little tiny things that make a big difference. And good news yet again. If you get to this stage, once again you will get better results. Your technical prowess will improve. But I’m afraid, my friend, it’s still not enough.
You’re better probably than the friends that you have who don’t train at all. For sure, you’re better than some of the beginners in your class, for sure. But once again, there’s always somebody better. And that’s where you’re going to start feeling frustration again. And it’s at this point– we’re three stages in now to this learning process, technical, physical, mechanical– that we’re going to cross the threshold now.
We’re going to move away from the overall physical attributes that you might have and the information that you have and we’re going to move into the mental attributes. Maybe even the spiritual attributes that you have.
Which leads us to the fourth stage, strategic.
At this point, you really are starting to question, how do you set up the movement in question? Not just what do I do, how do you set it up? That’s what opens the door to tactical tips and tricks, not just physical ones, but strategic tricks.
That’s going to lead you into distraction, faking, messing around with timing, purposely messing around with distance, creating a chain of what ifs. You are now becoming a chess player in your martial arts, not just an animal.
You’re being thoughtful and careful. You’re setting traps. If I move here, the other guy is either going to go to A or to B. If he goes to A, then I do this. If he goes to B, then I do that.
So you’re starting to become very efficient in your decision making by setting traps, recognizing positions, and knowing where to move after that. This is a huge jump in your skill level.
When you get to stage four, this will really make a big difference. Things will start falling into place because you put them there. You set the mousetrap.
Now this is where certain combative arts like boxing, wrestling, Judo, Brazilian Jiu Jitsu all have taken a big leap ahead of some so-called traditional martial arts because their methodology includes more sparring and rolling, free time to actually play around with the strategy.
That’s the number one way that you’re gonna build better strategy by experimenting with how to set the trap, which traps work, which traps don’t. What kind of analyzing, what kind of personality that you’re dealing with, so you can better choose your next moves.
It becomes very involved, but again, I don’t want you to think that it’s the art that makes the difference. At this level, it’s just your training methodology.
To prove that, let’s say you want to be a boxer, and so you get some videotape on boxing and you learn the basic punches, you learn basic footwork, you condition yourself, you get in great shape, but you never spar. You’ve never faced anybody. You’ve never taken a punch and you’ve never hit anybody.
Would you be a great boxer? Could you be a great boxer? I would argue no. No.
Just like if you’re only doing forms in Karate or Taekwondo, you also will not be very proficient at sparring. And then to the next level, real life self-defense. So it’s not the art. It’s the training methodology. And for the fourth stage, to make your martial arts techniques really work, to develop your strategy, you’re going to need to roll or spar or have that playtime to experiment, which opens up the door to failure. But that’s where we learn you have to be vulnerable to this stuff.
All right, so once again, you’re going to make a big jump at this fourth level. But you’re going to notice that there’s still another level out there. You’re still going to run into people who just move you and you don’t want to be moved and you can’t move them, which takes us to the fifth level.
The fifth stage of your development is now going to be psychological or emotional, or let’s put them together, psycho-emotional.
This would open the door to what I would call the soft skills of martial arts, not the conditioning, the hard skills, the soft skills.
That would include dealing with fear. That would include increasing your awareness, managing your ego, judging yourself too harshly, not being worried about the judgment of others who are watching your practice.
This would also involve increasing your sensitivity, how you’re feeling each moment, the development of your confidence, the sharpening of your focus, your ability to commit and follow through on something. And like I said in the last stage, your ability to make mistakes and keep flowing, moving forward to get to the lesson.
If you’re afraid of making mistakes, if you’re worried about how people are going to judge you, if you don’t want to be seen failing, then you will never pass into this stage. You will never develop to make your techniques work better against more people.
Again, looking back, you will have success over a large number of people. But if you’re trying to be the best martial artist you can be, every little topic I just mentioned there has to be faced and dealt with. So how do you do that? This involves reflection.
After you’re sparring, after you’re rolling, after you’re experimenting, all this stuff you’re working on on stage four, you need to sit down and just relive it, reflect on it. What was working, what wasn’t.
Be honest. Where did you feel great? Where did you feel awful? Be honest about it.
Where did your temper get you out of position? Where did your passivity put you in a bad position? When did you do too much? When did you do too little?
When did you not see something coming? When did you just make the wrong choice? When did a trap work? When did it not?
The key here is the taking the time to reflect and then being super honest with yourself. It’s just you. Be honest. Figure out what’s missing.
Is it my ego? Is it my fear? Is it my commitment? And then choose your tool.
Maybe meditation time is where you can work on some of these issues. Maybe a mantra, reminding yourself of how powerful you are and what you can do. Maybe visualization could be a powerful tool for you. Seeing things work better, seeing yourself perform better the way you want to, dealing with your psychological and your emotional issues.
This also involves, I think, experimenting. You have meditation, visualization, and even while you’re rolling and sparring, change your mindset to see what happens. The experimentation that you were doing in the last stage might just be very physical…
I’m going to grab here to see what they do. I’m going to move here to see what they do. But now inwardly, you say, well, what happens if I keep my breathing slow while I spar today? I’m just going to focus on any differences that come up from me altering my breathing patterns.
Maybe you’re going to keep reminding yourself it’s okay to make mistakes and you’re going to forgive yourself up front to free yourself from that inhibition, just to see how that affects your workout, to see if that changes anything.
I will tell you personally, I’m amazed how if I’m driving into a workout, if I put an idea in my head, a separate, a new concept or a different concept, a singular concept, I cannot believe what a difference it makes on everything else. You could have 20, 30 years worth of habits and moves that you’ve been working on, but you change your attitude about something, you change your outlook on how you treat yourself inwardly, and the whole workout could be completely different. It’s like you’re a different guy.
So I encourage you to experiment not just with your physical movement, but experiment with your attitudes and your opinion of yourself, because it makes a huge difference. And by the way, I’d like you to consider that perhaps it’s these soft skills, your sensitivity, your awareness, your commitment, your focus, that will ultimately be more important to you than anything physical. Because as we get older, no matter who you are or what style you do, you’re going to get a little more brittle, you’re going to have a little less energy, you won’t be quite as explosive, you’re going to lose some muscle mass. So no matter how fast and strong you were and how much that’s helped you in the past, at some point you’re going to have to shift over to the soft skills to really get what you need. Just a thought.
Now, if you’ve come through those five stages, you’re probably doing really, really well. You’re pretty much untouchable perhaps in your school. But wait, my friend, there’s still one more level. Please, don’t give up yet. One more level.
Stage six is the creative stage.
Now is the time that you truly become a martial artist. A martial artist, a pure, fully functioning, fully empowered martial artist, is not asking anymore, What do I do? You’re asking, What do I want to do?
When you ask that question, What do I want to do, the goal would be to have everything as your choice. I want to be able to do anything I want.
I want to kick you in the head. I want to take you down. I want to choke you. I want to let you go. I want to break your arm. I want to control you. Whatever you want.
I want to end you. I want to befriend you. I should have those choices if I am a true martial artist, at the highest level. I’m not saying that’s easy. I’m not saying I’m there. But that’s where I’m heading. That’s where I’m aiming.
At that point, all the information that you’ve gathered and all your experience leads you to creation. I’m not looking anymore– please tell me what to do. Hey, how did you do that?
I’m not interested really anymore in everyone else’s experience because I know that everything now is up to me. I’ve seen it all. I’ve felt it all. Now I need to figure out how to put these pieces together, how to collect the principles that make all techniques possible, and let that be my guide.
I’m no longer following a playbook. I’m no longer just following one coach’s system. I’m not following a step-by-step procedure. I’m in the moment.
I’m customizing every situation to what I want. I am making martial arts my own. I’m not a copy of anyone. I’m not a replica. I am me. And this is what I do.
At this stage, there’s really no limit. It’s going to depend on how long you live and the level of your training.
If you’re already very confident back at level 3, you mastered your technical, physical, and mechanical self, and you’re able to maintain that conditioning for most of your life, you won championships and now you got to school and you don’t really feel like sparring and rolling anymore, you want to kind of just sit back and share what you got, that may be enough for you.
If you kept going to really start playing with strategy and your emotions and the soft skills, and now you’re breaking through to this creative level, I think you’ll be able to get more enjoyment out of your martial arts forever, because you won’t hit that wall that so many of us do, where the physicality runs out, you get an injury, you get a knee implant, and then you quit. This happens all the time.
People think, Oh, that’s the end of my martial arts because I’m 20 pounds overweight. Oh, I hit the end of my martial arts because I have a hip replacement. I hit the end of my martial arts because, hey, I’m not a kid anymore.
No, martial arts is for everyone at all times. You know that.
If you can get to the sixth stage, the creative stage, if you’ve done all the work on your hard skills and your soft skills, you can still play the game. You are still a force to be reckoned with. So please make that your goal.
All right, so those are the six stages, I believe, that it takes to make your martial arts techniques, no matter how fancy they may be, to really work. To sum this up,
Number one, nothing works right out of the box. So no matter where you are, what style you’re studying, when someone shows you a move, it never just works right now for you. It can’t. You’re going to have to go through this process. And again, these stages will overlap.
That’s because, number two, we’re all different. Some people might come in and they’re already really athletically powerful. So, they rely on that all the time. And they don’t have any value for the soft skills. They don’t see the future.
They don’t see any examples of the wise old man. Their teacher is a big strong guy. They’re a big strong guy. So, they just make that stuff work to that level.
Okay, someone else comes in. They’re not athletically strong. They’re not well coordinated. So, right off the bat, they might gravitate towards the soft skills first. They already know I’m never going to be big and strong and explosive. So, I’ve got to be more sensitive. I’ve got to have more confidence in what I’m doing. I’ve got to set better traps.
So, we’re all coming in at different stages. And don’t forget, number three, we change. So, even if you are a hot shot in your 20s, then you get into a car accident, you’ve got some nerve damage, maybe now you can’t rely on your body the way you used to. So, you’ve got to switch over to some more soft skill prowess.
Plus, we all get older, as I already said. So, as your capabilities change, you’ll have to come back through these stages and rework, Gee, now that I can’t move my hip a certain way, I need new information. What other techniques can I do with one leg out?
What can I do when I lose my flexibility? What can I do if there’s multiple attackers and I never really thought about that before? What can I do if I’m on a cane?
So, you might go back and start over again and get new information and then start working on the details of that and then start working out how to set up new traps with that new tool or your different body. So, that’s okay.
Please know, we all hit walls. That’s part of the process. We will always be hitting walls. That’s the nature of this stuff. But this never ending process should also include experimentation and the openness to change, to fail, to keep learning.
That is the one constant through all of these stages. We’ve got to be open to the change.
I say again, the good news is, the happy ending here, is that, I believe, if you do the work, your techniques will work. If you’re doing the right work, as we laid it out here. And this is true for everything in your life.
You know what money is all about. And if you do the work, you’ll be more financially secure.
If you want good relationships, you know what that takes. If you put in that work, experiment, fail sometimes, but learn, observe, reflect, be honest, you’ll have better relationships.
If you want to be healthy, you know what to do. Do the work. Experiment a little. Refine it. You’ll be healthier.
That’s the good news. You will always be able to improve. The only warning I have is that the process is always very frustrating too. Because no matter how good your information is, and no matter how hard you work, you can still lose.
Lose your money, lose your friends, lose your life. We’re born to lose. We’re all losers in that sense. But what makes us winners is that we keep trying. That we don’t give up.
We don’t just accept, say, Well, gee, I’m 14 years old, but I heard I’m going to die someday. So, I’m out. I’m not going to do anything. I’m just going to lay around, eating ice cream, watching the tube.
That’s a sad waste of life, right? Because I think the fun of life is to see how far we can go. For the fun of it. Not because you have to, because it’s fun. It’s fun to focus on improvement. And that’s really the closing thought.
If you focus on improvement, not perfection, you will find the secret to making your techniques work. And if you focus on improvement, instead of perfection, you will also find the secret to a happy life.
Okay, I hope that helps. Please remember, none of this is easy. Making your techniques work, or making your life work, is not an easy process. But that’s why you should be proud of yourself for each step that you take.
Until next time, smiles up, my friend. Let that smile be your shield and your sword. Keep fighting for a happy life.
