Picking the right instructor

Martial arts is going to make your kid great. You sure about that?

Parents bring their kids to martial arts class because they're hoping to give them confidence and maybe to help their character. But this is not an automatic thing. We can be silly and just look at a TV show like Cobra Kai or an old 70s kung fu movie. And there's always a bad character and they're a skillful martial artist. So even in our fiction we can acknowledge it. Unfortunately, if you look at the news occasionally you'll see where some martial arts instructor was way out of line and something really terrible happens. And that's really a tragedy. You can't just assume that because a person's going to take martial arts class that they're just going to automatically be great people.

I can't tell you how many times people have gone to martial arts schools and assumed that because that person was a high-ranked martial artist that they're probably a good person. You sure about that? Nope. I was a musician before this and there's plenty of excellent musicians who are not nice people. Just because a person acquires a high level of skill doesn't make them automatically across the board that they're good.

There's a Miyamoto Musashi quote from his book where he talks about if you can see the way specifically, often you can see the way generally. If you understand how martial arts work, you can have insight into other things. There's a famous story where he was trying to draw something for a noble person in Japan and he didn't like it. He ripped it up. That was not a smart move, because that nobleman could have gotten rid of Musashi. And he redrew it. And when he redrew it, it was really wonderful. They asked, well, what was different? He said, the first time I drew it like an artist, the second time I drew it like a swordsman, and I'm a swordsman. I'm not an artist. So it is possible for that to happen, but it's not automatic. And that still doesn't make you a good person. That's about skill acquisition.

So what does make someone a better person potentially in a martial arts school? It comes back first to what do you value as a parent? What is it that's important to you? Is it that they are successful? Because if it's just that they're successful, it could be very Machiavellian. They could be successful, but not at the cost of their integrity. Yeah, this is important, but not more than this. It's important to be a good martial artist, but not at the cost of your soul. Having that kind of hierarchy to what's important.

It's really on the parents to find not just, oh, do they teach this martial art or that martial art? But also, what's this person like? That's part of my motivation for doing this. There's tons of taekwondo places. There's tons of jiu-jitsu places. But if you get to know who I am, and you agree with me about the things I'm talking about, then that's going to make it easier for my tribe to find me. The people who are resonating with what I'm saying, hopefully they'll find this place and say, hey, that's a guy I want on my team to help with my kid. You're the leader, and as I like to say to the kids, I'm here to play tambourine for your folks in their band. It's an important job and I got to play tambourine sincerely.

Make sure that you're finding a place that cares about integrity, that cares that the kids are looking out for each other, that they are looking out for their health, looking out for their betterment. Some people like a more competitive environment. I think that's great. Some people aren't wired for all that. I think that's great, too. You just have to figure out what's important to you and make sure that it gets conveyed through the school. And treat the martial arts school as a tool for you to help parent from a new angle.

A martial arts school can help them find a process by which to learn a thing, pressure test it, assess the result, and then get that process going. And as they acquire more physical capacity, they're going to naturally become more confident. And then they're going to start asking questions about themselves. Well, if I can do that, what else can I do? And then some of that Musashi stuff comes into play. Well, if I see the way here, where else does that show up?

I was pretty lucky. My folks were able to do that, and I had some really wonderful music and martial arts instructors at a young age that I feel like got me going in the right direction. In the course of my martial arts journey, I had to deal with some instructors that weren't so great, but I was able to discern and figure out, okay, this person I can't go any further with them. We're going to go over here now. And if I hadn't been given those things I would have gotten sucked into some martial arts groups that were kind of awful and a little scary, frankly.

Keep that in mind, mom and dad. Picking the right instructor, making sure to stay connected, and making sure to steer them in the right direction as they acquire skill, and as they maybe get a couple trophies or have some losses. Make sure to keep them straight.

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