Sunday, 2 September 2018

Qualities I Don’t Have

Heyo everyone, this is the part two of last weeks blog, and will be focusing on the second half of the topic. For anyone who missed my blog last week, I talked and explained about the five qualities of a black belt I believe I have. Now, I’ll talk about the five I believe I lack.


  1. Confidence/Fearless of Failure. Over the last few years, I’ve been struggling with a problem I had once received professional help on. This problem, of course, is anxiety. I find that, when faced with any form of negative plausible outcome, the stress and pressure cause me to fear failure, which cause me to freak out. For me, this is something I have to overcome. A black belt should be willingly and ready to learn in any circumstance, and one of the best ways to learn is through failure. A mindset that is stronger in the beginner classes and weakens as you move up is that failure is a bad thing. Nobody likes to fail, that’s a given. But being able to accept your failure and use it to propel yourself forward is a very mature concept in my opinion, and is something I see in a black belt. 


  1. Control. Being able to channel your properly whilst keeping it in complete control is by far one of the biggest qualities a black belt should have. I find I can control myself using small quantities of power, but the moment I have the increase it, my control starts to lower at an alarming rate. This is something that greatly concerns me because in my eyes control is one of the, if not the most important qualities a black belt should have. The big thing for me is mainly in sparring when I get backed into a corner, or when I feel “outgunned”, for lack of better term. I have a tendency to start lashing out and giving it my all, which usually ends up being all power and little control. This is something I’ve been working on over the last little hi and I think it’s coming along, but it still doesn’t feel like where I want it to be. 


  1. Beginner sets the place/leadership. One thing I struggle with when doing a warm up or working one on one with someone is doing everything at their pace. I have a tendency to do things at my own pace and sometimes I forget that the people I’m leading don’t go quite at my pace. If I take everything I’ve learnt in the past 8 years and try to teach it to one person in 30 minutes, it’s overall a waste of time. When working with someone who has lesser experience then you, you have to understand what they know, and what the best step for them is. And that’s what’s I forget. The best STEP, not STEPS. Learning takes time, so it’s best to make sure you don’t over-teach and give out more then they can handle.


  1. Technique > Realism. Yes, I’m one of those people who like to jump straight to realism. This is a bad habit that has developed over the years and it’s finally come back to bite me. When jumping straight from learning something to realism and bypassing speed, power, accuracy and technique, what you’re learning ends up not looking very good. At all. Overtime, I’ve slowly been working on trying to get everything order, and I’ve been able to get my speed/power and accuracy someone in line, but I’m still struggling with the very first step. Technique. A lot of my technique is not in a good place, and I’ve been working like crazy the last few months trying to get everything in line. Now it’s a balancing game. I want to try and get my technique more level and where it should be but I also don’t want to sacrifice too much of my speed/power, accuracy or realism to do so. 


  1. Courage. This is one I wasn’t sure I should put or not, but I decided I should. I’ll have to explain this one a bit in depth because it makes sense in my mind but I don’t know if it’ll come off in words well. When I think of a black belt, I think of someone who is capable of breaking through mental and physical boundaries to reach their goals, among things. This isn’t easy to do. Nothing is, really. They all take a tremendous amount of work to achieve, and with that, tremendous amounts of courage. When trailblazing into unknown territory, you never know what may go wrong. For me, a quality of a black belt is being able to overcome the “this will go wrong” attitude and attempting anyways. This takes a huge amount of courage, something I find myself lacking in. As someone who has struggled in the past with dealing with fear, it’s hard for me. I think being able to keep my chin up and trek forward despite how intimidating it may be is something I definitely need to work on, but I don’t even know where to start. This is a messy idea, I couldn’t put it in writing as well as I was hoping but that’s the gist of it.


Overall I have a lot to work on, and whilst this list may change these are the 5 big ones in my opinion, as of right now.


No comments:

Post a Comment