My parents told me “practice makes perfect”. Generations of wisdom seems to support that.
The most common issue in martial arts in the current generation is that a lot of people assume they can just ‘know / imitate’ the moves and not train for it. The fact is that a punch that is practiced thousands of times feels different than a punch from someone who just ‘know’ how to punch. So practice do make a difference.
However, some practices can be a waste of time. Besides wasted time, something that is suppose to save you in times of desparation become a sense of false security and may even cost your life. How can some practices go so wrong?
- I know of people that has trained for years on some classic form but hardly making a difference. If you don’t know what kind of improvements you are looking for, chances are that you may not even be training correctly. For example, training for long jump versus long jump is very different.
- When I was in primary/grade school, if I missed my homework, the penalty is to write “I will remember to bring my homework to school” or whatever you should/shouldn’t do x number of times. However, the penalty did not change my behaviour. Even worse, my handwriting actually got worse because after the first 20 lines, I gain efficiencies by scribbling and I start to lose focus as well.
- Swimming more miles may improve your cardio but it probably will not help you sprint faster. Similarly, those training for marathons cannot just add more miles to get a better ranking.
- I use chopsticks for all my life but I don’t anticipate any substantial ‘improvements’ even if I repeat it more times.
Exercise
So I gave you some reasons why “Practice makes perfect” may not yield the desired result. Your task this week is to identify what must be added so that practices are productive.