Humility and Karate

The other night my teacher had me join her at another school for some extra training with a different teacher. The idea being that as I get ready to go for my brown belt in this style it would be good to get input from a few different teachers on what I need to work on.

Well, let me tell you it is a quick lesson in humility. After working on this style for a bit over two years now I thought I had the basics down. It is amazing all the small corrections someone can point out when they have not been working with you. It was quite the wake up call.

Now I am happy that most of the corrections were small stuff, so that was good but it does hit you right in the ego. All that stuff I thought I was doing so great? Ya, still needs work.

That is one of the good and bad things about Karate I think, no matter how much you train and work on things, there is always something you could do better. It is not like a college where you get your grade and move on. You are always trying to tweak things a bit here and there to get better. There is always something you could be working on no matter how many years you have studied. Personally I think this is good, it keeps one’s head from getting too big, but I think it also may be the reason so many folks start the martial arts then quit. It is one of the few things you start but will never finish. . . . and the funny part is sometimes it is the master that points out what you need to fix, and sometimes it is the new guy that just started.