What does it mean to be a true Martial Arts Master? We often have visions of a small Japanese master who lives high on a misty mountain. Only he has the real secrets of self defense. He is a magical man, impervious to pain, and unbeatable in combat. Though frail he has the strength of 10 men. The words he tells you answer all of life’s questions. But that is the movies my friends! I have met many true martial arts masters, and am considered to be one by some. I can tell you – the movie version is fiction! There are no Martial Arts Masters! But there ARE Master Instructors.
It is unfortunate that most of our knowledge of the martial arts comes from martial arts movies. Works of fiction, that show us the story we want to be reality, but simply isnt. The truth about martial arts masters is that they are not magical men, who are impervious to pain and unbeatable in combat. They tend to be older gentlemen, who have aching joints, old injuries, scars, and will avoid combat or any type of violence if they have the choice. But that doesn’t really make for a good story. We don’t want martial arts masters to be just like us – or our grandfathers. We want them to have overcome aging, found the magic diet, able to stomp a 300 lb man with a lightning fast ridge hand to the groin. They never had to work, because with their monk like demeanor, and amazing combat skills, they gleaned riches from their days as wealthy samurai and then retired to a life in a bamboo cabin in the hills, eating what they grow, and living on the gifts of those students who make the trek to learn his secrets.
That is truly a shame – because we miss the actual importance to the martial arts of someone who has dedicated most of their lives to a combat art.
What we fail to embrace in our lack of understanding of martial arts mastery – is exactly what has been mastered – and how.
Let me first address the how. How does one become a martial arts master? Training. Endless, painful training. Week after week, month after month, year after year for decades. From this training comes the technical skills necessary to be a martial arts master. He had to march the same road as all students under the watchful eye of a sensei to learn the basic, intermediate, and advanced techniques of one or more systems of self defense. Once receiving the blackbelt (if the system uses that ranking), he must now spend years honing those skills. Practicing, fighting, contesting, training. After a decade or so, the curriculum that makes up his basic set of skills will have been mastered pretty well. But he is still not a master.
After a decade or so of training comes the “seasoning” period where the practitioner becomes aware of his place in the dojo and in the lineage of the dojo. He begins to understand the role and responsibility of first being a Sempai and then a Sensei. There will begin to come the understanding of how to impart knowledge to others. Up until this point there has been an inward focus – which now must be pointed outward. There was taking, where now there must be giving. There also comes an understanding of what it takes to run a class and perhaps a dojo. There are business aspects and safety aspects. One learns how to deal with the many types of personalities that come with new students and not so new students. All the while, this man must maintain control of his own life outside of the dojo. In this modern world we cannot recede into prior centuries – we live here and now. We have to deal with insurance and bills and jobs and family and automobiles and laws and permits and children. We have responsibilities to our physical genetic families and our martial arts families. On the way to mastery this sensei will need to learn to juggle all of those responsibilities. Sometimes he will and sometimes he wont.
As the greatest secret to mastery comes in the fact that the master is a simple human, like all around them, with the same successes and failures, with similar worries and concerns, with normal everyday responsibilities – he has to gladly sacrifice a huge amount of his private time to the teaching of students. While a martial arts practitioner may train a few times a week, go to the gym, enjoy family time, etc. The sensei devotes all of his spare time – and some not so spare to the dojo and the improvement of others. He spends most of his time giving and coaching and training others – and THAT is what makes his special. He is just like you and everyone else – except that besides his regular life – he gives his heart and soul to the dojo and the students. But this still does not make him a master.
So what makes one a martial arts master? Nothing! Nobody ever masters the martial arts. Nobody will ever be perfect and perform flawlessly all the time in every self defense circumstance. The reality is that it takes so long to truly become a technical master, that the physical body begins to lose its edge by the time the technical edge arrives.
Then why do people get ranked or called a master? Here is your answer. Because a master is ranked as a Master Instructor. Being a martial arts master means that you are a martial arts master instructor! You have the technical ability and the years of teaching experience to know how to pass on the knowledge to others. And this is no easy feat. Every student learns in a different way, has a different background, has different physical and mental skills and training needs. A true master can see the path that each student needs to take in order to succeed in the martial arts. The strong may need technical proficiency. The weak may need toughness. The young may need patience. The old may need motivation. The skilled may need coaching. The not so skilled may need reassurance. The true master knows the history of the system, the teachers of the past, the history of each technique. He know how the entire system fits together to bring students along the path. A master knows every technical nuance, even if he may not be able to perfectly execute every nuance himself every day. A master instructor feels the “on” or duty to those who have passed down the knowledge through the ages and knows he must not only pass on the knowledge, but improve upon it. A martial arts master’s goal is to ensure his students become better than him!
Being a martial arts Master (instructor) also means that other instructors come to you to learn. There are nuances in technique and teaching that they wish to glean and impart to their own students. They wish to use the master’s knowledge to improve themselves and their students.
The final secret to being a Martial Arts Master is knowing that you also have a martial arts master – living or dead – that you look to for your own training and motivation.
Finally – humility is key. Thinking you are a master makes you feel like you want to show and tell the world that you are one. BEING a martial arts master makes you feel like you are a worthless – unless you can make your students and other instructors be the best that they can be. You wouldn’t think of calling yourself a master, and feel somewhat embarrassed when others do. This is what it means to be a Martial Arts Master!
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