Why Does It Take Forever to Learn Martial Arts?

Learn Martial Arts Faster!

On this subject of why it takes forever to learn martial arts, consider the following scenario…the mugger charges out of the alley and throws a whole, darned garbage can at you! Do you ask him to hold off on throwing the can because you’re only on your tenth Karate lesson and haven’t reached the beating up the mugger section? Or do you ask him to go away because, here it comes, you forgot to renew your contract after the fourth year at the local dojo?

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Al Case...1974. Young, wasn't I?



The point of this silliness is to make a point, why does it take so long to learn the martial arts? You can teach a soldier to fly a fighter jet, go to war, spend time in a concentration camp, come home and retire, in the time it takes to learn some systems of the martial arts. One system I know of takes 17 years to earn a black belt.

Of course, there is always the point that you’re learning more than just self defense. You’re learning a life style, you’re investing in your old age, you’re solving the martial mysteries. But that trash can is still flying through the air and you’ve already taken ten whole lessons so what are you gonna do?

There is an old saying, garbage in, garbage out. And, to make an analogy, if something is hard to put into your head, then it is going to be hard to get out. So maybe it’s time to look for an art that is as fast to learn as boxing, or running, eh?

Yes, I know Karate is an art, not a sport, but there is no reason it can’t be learned quickly. It just has to be taught by concept, and not by one significant technique after another. Techniques that are, to be truthful, random data and don’t always fit together.

That is one of the major problems, you know, you learn a thousand techniques, and until you get to technique number one thousand and one, you don’t have enough data to be able to make sense out of the whole thing. And then, after a hundred years, you finally become competent…and die.

The solution, as I pointed out, is that the martial arts must be taught by concept. Instead of having a fellow memorize hundreds of techniques and katas, have him learn the concept which is underneath all those katas and techniques. Have him learn the concept, and, suddenly, you’re going to find that he can figure out those thousand techniques all on his own, and then it won’t take forever to learn Martial Arts!

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