discipline Archives

Motivation, Discipline and Habits

I’ve been training for a while now.

Some evenings I really don’t want to get in the car and drive in the dark through the pouring rain and carry the kit bags to the venue. It’s cold, it’s wet, I’m tired.

Of course, I have to go. Others depend on me. Once I’m there I’m glad I went. The mental and physical challenges of training release a welcome amount of dopamine. I am motivated by the engagement and achievements of others. I know that what I’m doing is good for me and good for those training with me.

Motivation

enthusiasm for doing something
the need or reason for doing something
willingness to do something, or something that causes such willingness

Discipline

training that makes people more willing to obey or more able to control themselves, often in the form of rules, and punishments if these are broken, or the behaviour produced by this training
the ability to control yourself or other people, even in difficult situations

Habit

something you do often and regularly, sometimes without knowing you are doing it

It is often observed that motivation may get you training to begin with, but it can be difficult to sustain. We are often told that we need discipline, the self control to continue to train, even when it is not the easiest course of action.

Discipline is important, but it requires motivation to be fostered in the first place.

Motivation is driven by reward and results; enjoying the activity, feeling stronger, seeing improvements in co-ordination or flexibility or mobility, experiencing any desired (and worked for) changes in physical appearance. There are many overlapping reasons that might motivate a person to start a martial art. Our motivations may change over time.

I believe that motivation does not require discipline, whereas discipline always requires motivation both for its creation and to be sustained. Discipline will carry you on occasions that you lack short-term motivation, but it requires the longer term motives of reward or punishment to be sustained in the long term. You may lack the short-term motivation to attend one particular training session at one time, but the discipline that drives you to do it anyway comes from longer term motivation and force of habit.

The best ways to motivate yourself in training are:
1. to enjoy it, and
2. to gain rewards (physical satisfaction, mental satisfaction, social needs, goal achievements) and to recognise them.

By feeding motivation you create incentives for repetitive behaviours which become habits. The more habitual your training, the more you are likely to gain from it, especially as it will bring incremental and observable progress. The more habitual your training, the more routine it is, the less conscious willpower is required. Training becomes swimming with the current rather than against it.

Regular activities become habits. Things that you do, often without any conscious mental effort. To get to the stage of doing something habitually I either need to want to do it (I’m motivated) or I need to make myself do it even when I don’t want to (I’m disciplined). This may seem like semantics but I would suggest that once something is a habit, it is not a discipline.

So how to stay motivated?

From a coaching perspective, training needs to be a positive experience, even when it is hard. Good effort and good techniques need to be praised. Improvements noted. Students should feel welcome and valued. Feedback on lower quality performance should be focused on why and how to adjust. Effort and ability should be rewarded with activities that enable personal expression (just because something may be a game does not mean it cannot develop and refine integral attributes and skillsets) and are both challenging and enjoyable.

From a personal perspective motivation comes from enjoying the activity (which could be either the activity, the company or both) and/or seeing desired results from the activity. For the latter regularly setting SMART goals can help.

Specific
Measurable
Achievable
Realistic
Timely

We can set SMART goals ourselves, or in coordination with other students or coaches. It is better to have multiple concurrently running and overlapping small step SMART goals rather than a single distant goal. Regular recognised success increases the likelihood of leaning into effort which in turn increases the likelihood of future success. Too often we overreach on our targets; just choose to increase a bodyweight exercise by one rep a week, or choose to do one kata a day – after a month the change will be noticeable and you can adjust the goalposts. Small changes to routines are also easier to accommodate, leading to their becoming habitual behaviours.

In the last year I have made more progress recovering from training injuries than in previous years because I have been less ambitious in my goals and set SMARTer targets. The smaller increments have allowed more continuous forward movement than the bigger leaps that in the past have exposed me to further injury. I have strength targets for different exercises, aerobic targets for rowing and bagwork sets, flexibility targets and balancing targets. The measurable progress I have made has rewarded the effort invested and increased my motivation to keep stretching my limits.

I have always made a habit of daily training. On some days that is a fixed workout in a designated location, but once again starting small can build the habits to springboard to greater results. I do kata sporadically throughout the day. Tekki / Naihanchi and my own kata Initiative and Escape require small footwork areas to enable opportunistic practice. On some days my bodyweight workouts are spread out with sets as and when I have a moment to do them. I’ll do abdominal exercises or stretches whenever I have a free moment to lie down at home. I’ll stand on one leg while catching the weather forecast or waiting for the kettle to boil. Micro-workouts enable multiple reps and can keep the metabolic rate high throughout the day. Once you stop thinking that an exercise has to make you sweat or requires a change of clothes or at least an hour it becomes a lot easier to sustain more training away from the gym or the dojo. This form of training can either be a pathway to begin more intense set workouts or a performance enhancing supplement to them.

Identify your motivating factors. What is it you like? What is it you want? It’s okay to have ‘big’ motivations, but don’t neglect to recognise the SMART smaller ones that will keep you going.

Identify your training time opportunities. Recognise moments you can steal for training (and learning), moments you can fix for training, and maximise and enjoy moments you set aside for rest and relaxation.

Continuously set SMART goals to achieve and acknowledge those achievements.

Perceptions of Karate?

“Hi, I’m calling about a karate class for self defence, the Leisure Centre gave me this number, it’s for my nephew.”

“Can I ask how old your nephew is? The youngest I teach are thirteen years old.”

“Oh, he’s four.”

Sigh.

Despite my websites giving my minimum ages in several places, and having no photos of any pre-school children on any of my media, this type of enquiry regarding 4-6 year olds is the most common I get. If they are pre-school I tell them that I’m sorry but there is nobody I can recommend. If they are of primary school age I refer them to the local Judo group where I think the games and the contact will be good for the children (and I know they run a good youth programme).

Often my suggestion of Judo is rejected. They want their barely-shoe-tying offspring to learn self defence (or so they claim), or maybe have someone else instil discipline, self-control, and respect for elders, but they don’t like the idea that there might be contact or rough play. No, Karate or TKD (I also get asked if I know of any TKD clubs) are much safer options. No contact but happy smiling children marching obediently in silence to the command of an adult, or so the pictures seem to show. Every tired parent’s dream?

I should let this go. I should not get annoyed about the fact that karate is predominantly perceived as a crèche activity for children, or a safe no-contact form of exercise for parents and children to do side by side, because that probably does reflect the vast majority of karate available. Because I’m wearing the same uniform and using the same name I will naturally be placed in the same category.

With so much choice these days, advertising and the perception of keyboard warriors rule. Those who want to ‘fight’ or physically compete against others are drawn to Mixed Martial Arts, Muay Thai or Brazilian Ju Jitsu gyms or perhaps Boxing. All of which are disciplines visibly proven in their competitive arena. Others (especially those enrolled by their parents) might go towards Judo if they like competition and rough and tumble element but with perhaps more of the discipline aesthetic. Krav Maga tends to dominate the self defence market because of the gung-ho nature of its advertising.

White Dogi styles like Karate, Ju Jitsu and TKD don’t always train in their uniforms.

The intake of your average karate class now, whatever the type of karate (sport, classical, traditional, practical, children’s, crèche, functional, applied, modern, combat…), is now subtly different to that perhaps of the first forty years of karate in the west. Now we seem to have a higher proportion of people that either come purely for the stimulation of a different form of exercise, or who like the idea of studying self defence but are put off by actual violence (although some people do choose based on proximity or recommendations as people do arrive ‘up for it’). Is this a bad thing? I don’t know. From my perspective I feel that the people who come to me are the ones I can help the most if they were too timid to try more overtly aggressive combat sports, but then they could just as easily have gone to a karate club that is, from my perspective, simply teaching them children’s exercises, and not learned there anything that might have helped them avoid, de-escalate or escape from real aggression and violence.

The majority of self defence isn’t physical training.

But how is that different from any of the other disciplines that they could have chosen? I’m not going to point a finger at any single art other than my own because I think all martial arts, in differing ways, suffer from the same issue of a huge diversity in club quality, approach and understanding.

I’ve seen a lot of different systems. I’ve seen a lot of different clubs. The good, the bad and the ugly; the deluded, the fantasists and the charlatans; the cults, the cocks and the c**ts. There’s a lot of interesting stuff out there. It’s no wonder Master Ken’s spoof of the martial arts community is so popular.

There is something for everyone out there, but if you want to find something that’s right for your needs you need to ask a lot of questions about what you really want to achieve, and be prepared to search for people who give you comprehensible explanations for what they are offering. There is nothing wrong with martial arts as a form of exercise, or as a crèche, so long as the instructor delivers that. When it boils down to it that’s how simple it is. Look past the style labels, look at clubs, talk to instructors, watch a class, talk to the students, talk to the parents, ask to see credentials and insurance, and then make an informed choice – you’re more likely to get what you want.

Standing on the shoulders of giants: perspectives of karate training and practice

If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.

Isaac Newton, 1676.

Isaac Newton was not the first man to recognize that while he had achieved much, he owed it to those who had gone before him. In 1159 John of Salisbury wrote that

Bernard of Chartres used to compare us to [puny] dwarfs perched on the shoulders of giants. He pointed out that we see more and farther than our predecessors, not because we have keener vision or greater height, but because we are lifted up and borne aloft on their gigantic stature.

Today Isaac Newton is recognized as a great figure for his work in furthering our understanding of the laws of physics. His work paved the way for further research, discovery and refinement in diverse fields by other great scientists such as Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking, some of which is known to (and partially understood) by laymen. The basic elements of Newton’s work are commonly taught in schools to children, and we owe a debt of gratitude not just to him but to the huge numbers of nameless teachers that have themselves gone no further for the majority of their academic careers, but stand teaching in his shadow and the shadow of his successors, creating the environment where others may climb on the shoulders of the giants, or grow to be giants themselves – whether standing on their own or on another’s shoulders.

There is nothing wrong with studying the work of Newton. It is a building block for later scientific research.

There does come a point however where studying Newton’s work becomes less a study of physics, and less about improving your knowledge of physics, than it becomes an exercise in historical research: a worthwhile and rewarding endeavour, but one of a different nature.

The world of Karate is filled with giants. It is an honour to stand in their shadow and teach what we believe they taught.

Those that do this perpetuate and further the art; they create an environment where others may grow to become giants or benefit from re-treading the steps of others. In some respects they are like the modern physics teachers in schools who give a good grounding in physics.

Both in the present and the past these karateka have created the environment where others can choose to follow the footsteps in the sand, and become great karateka teaching approximately the same material they learned, or stand on the shoulders of others.

Those karateka who choose to move on, to stand on the shoulders of others (to explore and develop other ideas gained through introspection or cross training), gain a different perspective. Through those differing perspectives and different pedagogies new karate styles have been born throughout the last century and will continue to be born in the future. This happens not because of an egotistical desire to create something new, but the very natural desire to pass on a personal perspective based on the lessons learned: it is why there is so much diversity not only in karate but in the martial arts as a whole. Those that have cross-trained know that the finer principles or ‘in depth study secrets’ of some arts are the bread and butter basics of others, taught immediately to beginners.

I am not saying that all those who have begun to teach new karate styles in the last century or more are giants, nor am I saying that those upon whom they built their study were giants: many of them are or were simply good karateka. They see differently because they stand on the shoulders of those that went before, rather than walk in the same footsteps. Like Einstein and Hawking they have the opportunity to go in a different direction because of the groundwork laid for them.

Karate is comprised of many different styles. My perspective is that different does not necessarily mean better, nor does it mean worse.

For me the descriptors of old, modern, classical, Okinawan, Japanese, western, practical or traditional do not equate to higher or lower standards, or greater or lesser worth.

Whatever our chosen karate discipline we may not all be giants, but we can all choose where we stand and what we wish to study, and we can all become better karateka.

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