Someone once said that martial arts doesn’t have to be a pastime. It’s not one of those things that you necessarily need to outgrow.It can have a beautiful long arc to it, as long as you’re able to consider mastery as a result of the practice.
Close to forty years after my first class, I’m still asking myself how can I be a good black belt, how can I be a better martial arts practitioner. So I want to challenge you: if you’ve drifted away from your martial arts goals, reset them now. This is a perfect time to recalibrate and and march forward.
If you’re one of those who commitment hasn’t wavered at all, then then the next question is, “OK then, how far am I willing to go into mastery? How much do I want to understand about this? What kind of practitioner am I going to be?” These kind of questions lead us into new areas for our training.
And furthermore, I encourage you to not stop there. Those questions are relevant in other areas of your life – what kind of husband are you willing to be, what kind of wife or daughter or coworker are you willing to be.
Becoming a “master of all occasions” requires the same kind of discipline and focus that it takes to master a martial arts practice. It isn’t domain-specific. And that’s a major component of the “art” part of the “martial arts”: mastery is the realm of the artist, and so is fearlessness.
– Gene Dunn & Foundation of Love
Listen to the podcast here: The Martial Arts Mind Podcast
For more about our larger project of cooperative Jiu-Jitsu and martial arts training, please visit the
Brooklyn Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu (Brooklyn BJJ) website here.
