Filling Your Bucket

Everyone wants to get better.  Everyone wants to get better, faster.  So, one of the big questions that our karate students ask, is how do you go about getting better, faster?  One answer is to continuously seek knowledge during every single class you take. 

Think of it like a bucket.  Every time you go to class, you want to get as much knowledge as you can and put it in your karate bucket.  Hopefully, you are using a large ladle to get big portions of knowledge by listening to your instructors closely and paying attention to the details they share.  Unfortunately, some choose to use a small spoon or even an eyedropper and make very little gains during class by not paying attention and not focusing on what is being taught.

Learning anything new requires much effort and focus.  You must be dedicated, and you must have a desire to make it happen.  It is only through hard work that most people succeed.  Yes, some are born with natural talents, but that usually only gets you so far.  Even those people must eventually dedicate themselves to practice if they want to keep moving forward and improve. 

As you get further up in rank, the amount of information you will get from each class decreases.  As a white belt, it might seem that every minute of every class is something new to understand and work on.  Slowly, as you make your way to an intermediate belt, there will be less new things to work on, and you will need to spend a lot of your time perfecting what you already know and honing your fundamentals.  When you get to the advanced level, it becomes much harder to glean the important new information.  You really have to pay attention and make sure to embrace it when it comes.  As a blackbelt, you might hardly ever get new information.  But, I can bet that when it does present itself, those who made it to blackbelt will be all over it and thoroughly dissect it and work on it because that is the mindset of a blackbelt. 

So, make sure that you are fully present and mindful during each class.  Stay in the moment and focus hard on what your instructor is sharing with you.  Write notes directly after class in your karate journal and practice it within 24 hours.  Karate is passed down from teacher to student and has been shared that way for many, many generations.  Make the most of your lessons and bring your largest ladle with you.

-Coach David-