My Martial Arts Confusion

More is less and can be deadly

When I was starting out in internal martial arts, I was attempting to learn many arts at once. I was attending classes in Taijiquan, Baguazgang, Xingyiquan, and Qigong and feeling quite superior about it. After all, the more one knows the more one can do, right? And this came on the heels of a couple years of Karate. So I really was on my way. Look out, Bruce Lee!

But something was lurking in the back of my mind that I did not want to acknowledge. It became obvious during a couple of sparring classes. I wasn’t doing well in these classes and at first, I had trouble identifying the problem.

After some reflection on my terrible performance, it started to dawn on me that I was constantly hesitating when sparring. And the hesitation was the result of confusion. I had lots of techniques, moves, and strategies in my mind. But few were actually coming out when needed.

The effect of this was the realization that if I could not defend myself in a controlled environment such as sparring, what was going to happen in a real confrontation?

Frankly, my emotions sank when I realized I could not defend myself. That’s a tough realization when the whole point of learning martial arts began with the desire to acquire self-defense ability.

At this point, I was 4 years into my martial arts journey. To realize that I was no more effective than when I’d started was disappointing to say the least. What was the problem?

In subsequent classes, I started to watch my reactions more closely. I tried my best to observe what I was doing in various situations. At first, I got lost in the minutiae of specific techniques; how did I respond to punches, kicks, grabs, etc? But it did not take long to expand that focus into a more general view of my reactions to an attack. When an opponent came at me, what did I do?

This was when I noticed the hesitation. There was a tiny moment in which I didn’t know what to do, which technique to respond with, and which martial art was most appropriate for this particular moment.

Of course, all this happened in a split second. So I had to repeat this observation procedure many times before I realized the problem…I had too many arts to choose from. Further, and most importantly, I didn’t really know any of them well enough since I was learning them all at once!

I knew that I had to make a change in my approach to martial arts at this point.

Stay tuned…

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