earn my blackbelt

How I did it: Sad to say, I did it through hard work.  I trained 2-3 times a week for years and years, and underwent numerous grueling 3-4 hour tests, practiced every form (ten of them) until my muscles could perform it without me, was thrown to the ground and bruised over and over again, but never gave up, because I truly loved it and truly wanted it.

The key I think is to find a dojo which a) is dedicated to perfecting technique, and b) will not let you progress until you are ready.  If you are in some dojo where you can breeze through the ranks and never are truly forced to know WHY you do things and HOW to make them more perfect, you will simply get bored and drop it after a while.  But if you find an instructor who challenges you, works closely with you, takes the time to understand how you learn, and makes you practice the basics over and over at every level, you will find the joy in the practice and not get impatient, because the simplest of moves will continue to reveal themselves as more complex and detailed than you had ever imagined.

And that's really what getting a black belt taught me: that a single punch is as beautiful as an entire form in the hands of someone who truly knows how to throw that punch with every inch of their body and every muscle they possess: with intent and danger and power, the way no one but a martial artist can throw it.

Lessons & tips:

• Getting a black belt for the sake of having it is not worth it.  As a
  category, "black belt" is not the most exclusive of clubs.  You're
  sharing that title with ten-year-olds in McDojos across the country who don't even know how to find their center of balance.  If you want to excel in martial arts, make THAT your goal, and the belt will come.  It's a side effect of dedicating yourself to perfecting every technique, but knowing that you never will.  And know, the belt is the beginning of a new kind of practice, it's not the end of anything, and it doesn't make you a master.
• Enjoy yourself.  The martial arts are incredibly fun, but if you don't keep that in your head, you'll get discouraged quickly.  It's hard, but it's supposed to be.  If there were no challenge, the reward would mean nothing.
• Avoid American Karate, large schools, any school that practices sport martial arts, and any school where you never spar.  You want a school in an established traditional style like Shotokan or Taijiquan or an optimized newer style like Kenpo or BJJ, nothing diluted or hybridized unless there was a reason for doing so.  Most hybrid/American schools are scams that just want you to pay the testing fees as frequently as possible.  It's like scientology with punching.
• Egotistical teachers don't know what they're talking about.  Any brilliant martial artist knows that they're far from the best.

Resources: Honestly, this bit takes some luck.  Without a truly great teacher, you'll never reach your potential.  Learning from videos and books is incredibly difficult and ineffective, and is mainly helpful in teaching you sets of movements when you already know how to do each movement.  The movements themselves are too hard to write and too hard to see in two dimensions.

But flip around youtube and wikipedia, read about and watch different styles until you find a few that interest you, then go to every single school of those types in your area, and find the school where the students seem the most impressive and the teacher seems the most humble.  Learn the difference between hard and soft styles, striking and grappling styles, etc, and find the one that seems the most like you.  However, beyond those distinctions, the actual style doesn't matter as much as the instructor.  Don't go to a mediocre Shaolin school instead of an amazing Kenpo school just because you think Shaolin monks are awesome.  Just go to the best school of striking arts you can find, and never assume your style is the best.

Nov 27, 2008, 01:04AM PST | 0 comments