Chapter 106: Don't Be Too Critical or Exacting

People in the martial art and karate teaching communities have fallen into the trap that to properly perform and apply skills requires an exacting adherence to certain forms and movements along with being very critical in those areas when observing and correcting. It allows those folks to create testing criteria and as long as it involves the more ascetic forms of training and practice without even a hint at self-protection that isn't bad. 

You don't want your practitioners to get bogged down in just how perfect the hand forms when doing a kata or bunkai. The focus should be to have fun, learn and experiment with their creativity. If one performs movements using the physiokinetic’s principles involved then they will be successful. The mind is properly directed and focused on what is critical to successful self-protection using said trained and "conditioned" skills of karate and other martial disciplines. 

Focus is the only thing you want to be self-critical about because focus on the intent of training along with the objective is how you achieve success in that discipline. If you find a dojo that has a long list of what they provide without a clear separation of duties as to the intent, i.e., sport vs. philosophical vs. self-help vs. self-protection, and objective then you need to pick the one that has priority for you and then find other dojo or venues that will fill the voids. 

Even when you are critical and exacting in learning, studying, practicing and applying fundamental principles of multiple methods for self-protection in a dual-training environment, one to learn the other to learn the adrenal-stress conditioned objectives, than allows you to make it work under some of the most aggressive and dangerous conditions most of us will ever encounter outside the professional fields. 

Don't be to critical, don't fret on tests and rankings and don't be too exacting where fun leaves and stress of a different kind takes over because your ultimate goal is to learn and apply the discipline in all types of situations.