The martial arts are constantly evolving, training methods and applications are improving creating a higher quality and more well rounded martial artist. Nowadays we find to be common knowledge of what past masters staked their lives upon to keep secret within their systems. One masters epiphany generations ago, is now a tip during group class. What took one master many years of experience to discover is now transmitted to the student in a matter of minutes. And yet, this is how it should be. We are in a time where students are presented many of the great techniques of the past without hours of proving themselves. Granted, there are many secrets still reserved for the higher level students that show the qualities and responsibility to uptake such jewels of the system, beginners are in a very lucky position to have all these resources at their fingertips.
Unfortunately, we find ourselves taking such information for granted, and expect more from our instructors and teachers, placing responsibility on them to make us better. Upon the foundational concepts presented to us, we must take it upon ourselves to study and analyze the technique and the concept, seek to understand the inside and outside of the movement, so that we embody the essence thereof. In a sense, we become the technique just as much as the technique becomes us. This takes more than an instructor presenting us with the information, and a drill to emphasize its concepts. It takes us, as martial artists to work and develop ourselves so that not only the movement becomes second nature, but the reasoning and concept of the action itself, so that a single movement can be adapted to any situation, without hesitation, as second nature.
Ultimately, consider this a call to action, the study of the martial arts is more than physical. Practice both in body and mind.
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