1.6.2017 /

How to get better in Taekwon-Do?

For long time I´ve got on my mind some consideration of the number of finished training classes, or more precisely the presence of people at the class. This article is not about the introduction of magical methods and tips of motivation. This is about to be food for thought what a person, who wants to get better
, should do better. In some Taekwon-Do practitioners is their attendance on very high level. But there are many practitioners whose class attendance is not quite good.

What is the reason? Perhaps, for them, Taekwon-Do is not such a big priority in their life unlike million other things that “must” be done. Everything about that if I say: “now I am going to do my homework and then I go to the Taekwon-Do class”; or “now I must visit my facebook, see some videos on youtube and talk about unimportant things… I have no time for training, I must learn some stuff to school!” Who was at the Easter Taekwon-Do camp heard my motivating speech. I was asking about a word (conjunction) which should not be in vocabulary of any sportsman, especially if he/she is a warrior. The magic clump of the characters is BUT. Let´s introduce some sentences that are connected with previous examples. We can easily say: “I wanted to go to Taekwon-Do class BUT I had to learn something for school.”; “I Wanted to go to competition BUT I had to visit my…” Can you imagine how much you would train more if you did everything to manage you school duties and save some time for your training? How many winnings would you gain at a competition if you informed your parents in time and they could plan the visiting of your grandma, auntie on another day? Everything depends on us, meaning YOU yourselves. Do we want to make excuses or do we want to get better?

Let´s see it form another view – the mathematic view. All of you pay the membership fee. Obviously nobody thinks about how much you pay for one class in case of full attendance and how much is it in the case of average attendance… Let´s use fractions for easier understanding. Somebody visits every class. His fraction is 1/1. Somebody attends only a half, third or quarter of the annual attendance. Those are fractions 1/2, 1/3, 1/4. Now we are going to transfer it to scoops of ice cream. We get different points of view:
1. I pay for 4 scoops. To make it easy one scoop is for $10. I pay $40 and I have perfect 4 scoops, which I eat.
2. Another variant – I pay for 4 scoops, I get them but I eat just one of them. The rest I leave alone because of BUT. In the end, one scoop that I ate costed me $40. I accept that for I did not eat those 3 scoops from my own free will.
3. The last variant is almost the same, though it´s very different. I give you one scoop because I know that you will not eat the three others. BUT you will pay me for 4 scoops. This way you won´t like it, will you? Why not? The situation is the same as in the previous case. It is and it is not – it´s just about the point of view on the same thing – each of us sees one thing by his own eyes, from different top of hill, from different view…

Don´t say and don´t BUT. Let´s eat all of the scoops you pay for. Practise, as your time and, unfortunately, your laziness allow!

I have been practising Taekwon-Do for damn many years, but (positive but) I guess I like it still more and more. It is my inseparable part as well as breathing the air. In our presence we don´t see the mistakes we do. We don´t see our wrong decisions. We see them later when we say: “I should have practise more in the past.” Maybe we will put the blame on ourselves: “Why was I such lazy-bones, why did I not attend the classes more often…?”

Final words:
- To do something, take our uniform and go to the training class is very simple in the end. It is more simple than explain (make an excuse) why I did not do that, why I did not attend the class, why I am still unable to manage specific technique…
- It does not matter how difficult our goal will be. What matters is, which way we choose to achieve it!