#117: Bad Advice in the Martial Arts [Podcast]

Fight for a Happy Life with Sensei Ando: Martial Arts for Everyday Life

Welcome to Episode #117 of the Fight for a Happy Life podcast, “Bad Advice in the Martial Arts.”

You get a lot of advice as a martial arts student… you probably give a lot of advice, too! But is it possible that all of that good advice is actually bad advice?

In this episode, I’m examining five pieces of popular advice that might not be helping anyone. In fact, these teaching clichés might be making your life harder! Here are the five suspects—

• Relax.
• Don’t use so much muscle.
• Leave your ego at the door.
• Stop doing the same technique–try something different.
• Don’t give up.

Any of these sound familiar? 🙂

Don’t get me wrong—there are good intentions behind all of these training tips, so I’m not saying you’re a bad person for repeating them. But I am saying that there’s a right time to share these words of wisdom and a wrong time… it’s that crucial judgment that makes the difference.

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Thanks for listening! Keep fighting for a happy life!

Bad Advice in the Martial Arts

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TRANSCRIPT

Howdy, Ando here from Happy Life Martial Arts, back from a bit of a hiatus. First one in ten years, I don’t feel too bad about it.

Welcome to episode #117 of Fight for a Happy Life, the show that believes even a little martial arts makes life a whole lot better.

Yeah, since you’ve seen me last, I moved from Raleigh, North Carolina back to Los Angeles. We lived there almost two years, about a year and three quarters. And don’t get me wrong, I have no hate for the East Coast. I’m from there. All of my family is there.

On this particular trip, I met some really great new people, some great new training partners. I learned a lot. I have nothing but nice things to say about the experience. But what can I say?

I love LA. So we are back. But enough about me. Let’s talk about you.

Today, I have five pieces of bad advice that you’ve probably heard in the martial arts.

And now that I can tell you, I’ve trained from coast to coast. I am sure no matter what your school is or who your teacher is, you’ve heard these pieces of advice.

Spoiler alert. The five pieces of advice I’m going to talk about today…

• Number one, relax.
• Number two, don’t use your muscle.
• Number three, leave your ego at the door.
• Number four, stop doing your favorite technique all the time. Do something else.
• And number five, don’t give up.

Those are the five pieces of advice that I’m going to call bad today. Now, here’s what I mean.

All advice, I think, is well-meaning, well-intended. But that doesn’t mean it’s always correct.

For example, very wise words, look before you leap. Have you ever heard that? But maybe you’ve also heard, he who hesitates is lost.

Now, those two pieces of advice are opposites. They have two different ideas. So which one is good and which one’s bad?

It all depends on your particular situation and when you hear the advice, right? The advice that you get today may not be so good tomorrow and vice versa.

So the advice that I’ve already listed here, the five pieces of advice, in some contexts is probably good advice. But not always. And I want to talk today about when that is bad advice and when you shouldn’t follow it at all.

All right, makes sense. So let’s get right to it.

Number one, relax.

Now, I have already ranted about how I think this is a terrible piece of advice in a separate video. So I’ll put that link below if you want to go into the full, full discourse, you can find it there. But in case you haven’t seen it, I’ll sum it up very quickly.

When people tell you to relax, they fail to see that your tension, if you’re tight, is a symptom of a problem. It’s not the problem itself.

If you are really a concerned teacher and you see someone is tense or you feel that you are tense yourself, the question is why? Why are you tense? Why are you not relaxed? That’s what you need to figure out.

I don’t think anybody walks around purposely trying to be tense. So when your teacher comes up or if you say to a student, relax, it’s like, well, no kidding, I would like to be relaxed. Why don’t you ask me why I’m not relaxed?

For instance, do you like getting hit in the face? Maybe you start martial arts and you don’t want to get hit in the face. So of course you’re tense.

Maybe you don’t like someone putting their arm around your neck and trying to choke you out and so you tighten up, you get tense. Those are natural reactions. So telling me to relax doesn’t help.

What is good advice? Well, the solution to tension is experience. You need to get better at what you’re doing. You need to get comfortable at what is making you so tense.

So as a teacher, you should be showing your students how to relax. Don’t just tell me to relax. Show me how.

If that means something simple like take a breath, that’s a great first step. Take a breath that does help me relax a little bit unless I’m being choked, then no, it’s futile.

Generally, it’s going to be introducing a skill, giving me a tip to show me why this isn’t so bad a situation, how to make it better, how to turn it around. And then the more you practice that, the more your tension will go away, the more comfortable you’ll feel, and suddenly, you just are relaxed.

It’s not something that you pursue directly. It’s something that happens as a reward for your practice. So, get more experience, and that should solve itself.

Number two, stop using your muscle. Stop using all your strength.

Recently, I was in a Brazilian Jiu Jitsu class, and there was a big guy. He’s a white belt, head taller than I am, at least 50 to 70 pounds, bigger than I am, and cut. This is a weight lifting kind of guy.

And when we rolled, I was moving all over him. I was tying him up. I was able to get out from under.

And after we rolled, I said, you know, it’s okay for you to fight back. It’s okay for you to use what you got there. Use your muscle.

And he said, oh, well, they told me not to. I answered, who told you not to? They’re just trying to make it easier on themselves, I think. With all respect to anyone who gave him that advice, you left him with nothing.

It’s like saying, hey, listen, don’t use your muscle. And you don’t use your speed. I see you’re very fast. Don’t use that.

Hey, I see you’re very flexible. Please don’t use that. Don’t kick me in the head. I don’t want you to use your flexibility right now.

What?

Hey, you seem to have really good cardio. Could you just hold your breath sometimes so we could even this out? Because I’d prefer if you were out of breath.

Hey, I noticed that your eyesight seems to be pretty good. Do you mind just closing one eye while we work out?

You wouldn’t say those things, right, typically? So why does muscle get such a bad rap? I don’t think that’s fair.

Particularly if you look at the heights of the sport, let’s say, of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, do you see people without muscle? No, I see people who are jacked up, people who admit to using steroids.

So they have muscle, they use muscle, and oh, by the way, they also happen to have solid technique. Okay, so as a white belt, this guy came in with muscle, which is an asset. That is something we should all have, some strength.

But then they told him, okay, don’t use the strength. But he had no technique to back him up. So now you have someone who doesn’t want to use their muscle because he’s being a good student, he’s doing what he’s told. But he also has no technique, so therefore, he’s a sitting duck.

He’s getting trounced by an older, smaller man, simply because he doesn’t know what to do. Again, that’s a bad habit. I say if you have muscle, use it. Absolutely use it.

Now, any advice I’m giving you today, I’m not saying hurt your partners, be reckless, be dangerous. No, of course not. But if you have an asset, use it.

Otherwise, what’s the alternative? You’re training yourself to not use your strengths. Believe me, if you jump out at me in the middle of a parking lot with a knife, I’m with my family or alone, I’m going to use everything I have to defend myself. If I have muscle, I’m going to use every bit of it.

So it doesn’t make sense for me to not use assets. That’s a terrible habit to get into.

Hopefully, the goal would be like, okay, you’re brand new, you have your muscle, so of course you’re using it because that’s all you know. So maybe you’re 99% muscle and you’re 1% technique.

But then a month or two goes by, maybe now you’re down to 95% muscle and 5% technique. Six months to a year, maybe you brought that down, maybe you’re 70% muscle use, and you’re relying on 30% technique.

And you keep training and training until the scales tilt, and maybe you’re so good, you’re like 99% technique and you just use a very little bit of muscle just so that you can function.

Well, that’s a wonderful training journey that you just went through. You figured out how to use your assets and how to succeed without a particular asset. That’s a full training experience.

And again, I think if you’re in a good school, you’ll have that luxury to learn that. You will learn when to use your asset and when not to, you’ll find the limitations of your asset.

Hey, I went really hard that first round using all muscle, but now I am gassed out. I can’t breathe. So now what am I going to do?

Ah, now you’re forced to figure out some techniques and strategies now that your muscle has been taken away from you. That’s what good training does. It strips away your strengths at some point, strips away your assets, so you’re forced to use something else. And that’s where the training fills in.

So, don’t fall into that trap. If you’ve got muscle, go ahead, bring it in. Don’t hurt anybody, but use it until you can’t. And then you’ll be able to use it more wisely. So use it and learn to use it wisely.

Piece of advice number three, leave your ego at the door.

I get it, I get it, but this falls into the same category as not using your muscle. For me, martial arts training should be a full body, full personality experience. So if your ego has gotten you this far in life, whatever successes you’ve had up till now, bring all those tools onto the mats.

If you are a prejudicial person, you walk in saying like, well, girls can’t fight. No woman’s going to beat me. Good. Keep believing that until you run into the female who taps you out. Now, your beliefs are challenged, which is exactly what should happen in a good school.

Maybe you come in arrogant. You say, well, I’m already a black belt in that style, so this style won’t be so hard. Oh, okay. Well, keep believing that. Good. And then when you find out that the tricks that work for you in that school don’t work so well in this school, then again, you’re going to have to relearn new habits. You’re going to have to start over again.

Maybe you were raised as mommy’s special little person. And so you walk everywhere thinking, I’m better than you. I’m a superstar. And believe me, I’m part of all of these things. I’m prejudicial, arrogant, and a spoiled brat. And martial arts wiped that smirk right off my face. Good training will do that. It will wipe that smirk off your face.

Again, so whatever your beliefs are, it makes no sense to tell someone, well, don’t believe those things.

How old are you? You’ve been doing this for 18 years, you’ve been alive. Or you’ve been alive for 30 years. You’ve been alive for 50 years. And those beliefs have gotten you this far.

But now try to start as a blank slate and see what happens. You’ll have nothing. You need to learn the limitations of your beliefs. You need to learn the errors in your ways.

So, I say don’t leave your ego at the door. Bring it on to the mats. That’s where we can test it. That’s where we can challenge it. That’s where change happens. So bring it.

Number four, stop doing your favorite technique all the time. Try something else.

I think we’ve all had this experience, right? You have a partner and you already know what they’re going to do, whether you’re sparring or rolling, whatever you’re doing. It’s like they always do the same thing.

So you tell them, hey, try something else. Now to me, this falls again into the same category as telling people not to use their muscle or not to bring in their ego. Now you’re telling them, hey, stop doing your favorite technique.

This is a strategic criticism. I already know what you’re going to do. But again, this is tricky.

When you start martial arts, you probably have some insecurities. You don’t know what you’re doing. And then you’re taught some techniques and you practice those techniques. And lo and behold, one of them perhaps starts to work for you.

And once you feel something working, that insecurity is now replaced with confidence. And now that confidence that you keep repeating because it keeps working becomes your identity. You are that technique.

If I’m sparring, I’m going to kick you with that roundhouse to the face because that’s my technique. That’s who I am. That’s what I do. We’re inseparable.

Well, that’s fine. But again, you should not be clinging on to that high kick like a security blanket, right? When we were kids, we talked about security blankets. The little kid can’t go anywhere without their favorite blanket. They’ll cry if you take it away from them because that’s their security.

The world is chaotic. They found this one piece of cloth that they can hold on to, they can control, makes them feel good. And now that’s how you can become if you cling to one particular technique all the time.

Now we know at some point, you have to grow up, right? As a human being, at some point, it’s better that you learn to let go of that blanket and find your security and other attributes in your life than to have someone come finally and rip that blanket away from you when you’re 25, you’re working at a bank and someone says, what’s with the blanket? That’s enough.

You’re making it’s embarrassing that you work here. No one’s going to come and ask you for a loan. Give me that blanket. You don’t want to end up in a tug of war with your security blanket out in the real world.

The dojo is a place where you can bring in your security blanket and then learn to let it go because you replace it with other more lasting and universal attributes. So that may become another technique.

Okay, you stop doing this technique and now you learn this other technique. But again, you don’t want to be reliant on any one or series of techniques. Your goal ultimately is to just be a confident person, knowing that you’re going to do your best no matter what the situation is and what tools you have to work with. You’re not reliant on anything.

So force yourself out of that comfort zone and if you don’t do it yourself, again, I hope you’re part of a good club, a good school that forces you out of it. If you keep trying your favorite technique, there should be someone eventually who shuts it down, who takes it away from you.

And I’m, by the way, I’m only speaking from my own experience. I kept pushing a certain technique. Just recently I could think of one move and I was using it for at least six weeks straight. I kept purposely putting myself into this bad position because I knew no one could do anything once I got there.

I was just learning how to shield up really, really well until I met one guy who broke through and then I realized I was vulnerable and then I had to let that go.

So I’m just speaking from my own experience. Let go of your security blankets before someone rips it out of your hands and you stand there crying and wetting your pants. That’s too late to start learning lessons.

Don’t let that happen in the real world. Let it happen in the dojo and just be brave. You want to be a confident person, not just someone who can execute certain techniques confidently. I think that makes sense.

Last one, number five. Don’t give up.

Boy, so many posters, so many anthems about not giving up, being tough, get back in there. But not all the time. Not all the time.

I know so many people who have spoken of a martial arts experience where they went to a school, starting martial arts, tore their shoulder, popped a knee, hurt their neck, and then gave up. And I would say that was the right thing to do at that time.

Yes, you should give that up. If you keep going back to a school and you keep getting hurt, something is wrong. And it may not be you. It could be a reckless environment, the vibe there, the teacher is not supervising, the techniques themselves just aren’t for you. Not right now.

So I would absolutely tell you, yes, get out of that school. Give up on that school.

Perhaps you’re following a diet. You’re on the XYZ diet, trying to lose weight, good for you. Six months has gone by, you’re really not losing any weight, and worse, you’re starting to stress out because you’re counting the right number of macronutrients, you’re timing your meals the right way, you’re doing everything you think correctly, but it’s not working for you. Give up.

Six months has gone by with no change, and now you’re just stressed out because maybe you’re not doing it right or you should try harder. No, maybe it’s just not for you. Give it up.

Self-defense. You might say, I’m really interested in self-defense and I found this club and we do forms and we do these pad drills, but you know, we never do partner work and it’s been a couple years now and I’m starting to think that I’m not meeting my goals about feeling confident in self-defense skills. Give up. Give up that school.

Now to be very, very clear, I’m not saying give up your goal. I’m saying give up that particular plan.

If you’re going to a martial arts school where you keep getting hurt, don’t give up your goal of becoming a great martial artist and learning to defend yourself. Find a different school, but give up on that first one.

If your diet’s not helping you become healthier and it’s just stressing you out, give it up. Don’t give up on the goal of becoming fitter and healthier. Just find another way to do it.

This is tricky because I think martial artists in particular are faith-based creatures. In the beginning, again, we’re insecure. We don’t know what we’re doing. So you go out looking, you find that school or that teacher, that style that speaks to you, you feel comfortable. And I have to have faith that if I do what they are doing, what they tell me to do, that I will reach my goal.

We have to have that faith to sign up at any club, right? But sometimes we forget what the goal was and we just end up stuck in a school or in a diet, or in any type of situation, where we forgot why we started.

So you’ve got to always measure what’s happening. Are you getting the results that you intended? If you’re not getting the results that you wanted and what you are getting isn’t better than what you wanted, give it up. Give up.

There’s no shame in that. I’ve given up more things than I can count. I’d have to sit here forever just listing all the things I’ve given up, whether it was a career path, whether it was pursuing a particular talent that I thought I had.

I’ve given up certain schools, certain teachers, not with malevolence. I don’t have hate for any of them, but they just weren’t meeting my goals. They weren’t pointing me in the right direction. So I gave up.

I’m not a quitter. That’s different.

It’s okay to give up, just don’t quit. If the goal is worthy, give up, but don’t quit.

It gets confusing. I know.

All right. Well, those are the five pieces of advice. So as we wrap this up, I’ll say again, if you are feeling tense, okay, be tense.

If you are using muscle and your strength, okay, use your muscle.

If you’re an arrogant, egomaniacal, prejudicial student, okay, use it.

If you’re using techniques that keep working, great, keep working until they don’t.

And if what you’re doing, your plan is not working out, well, then give it up. Form a new one.

All advice can either be bad or good. It’s truly up to your situation and to the timing when you get it. And my big message today, just remember, sometimes doing the opposite of good advice is the secret to a happy life.

Okay, I hope you heard something today that was the right advice at the right time in your life. If not, hey, come back in two weeks or two years, listen again. Maybe then it will be the perfect advice at the perfect time.

Until next time, smiles up my friend. Let that smile be your shield and your sword. Keep fighting for a happy life.

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