After a bad lesson...

[White Warlock]

Britnoob,

 

Here's a scalpel, there's the library and i'm your tutor. We have 20 patients in the other room that need bypass surgery. Go to the library, and let's get busy. In 7 days we have to operate.

 

Good luck.

[ramymensa]

Your situation is NORMAL and so are you. Karate is indeed spooky sometimes and different from everything you've done before. The feeling of "what am I doing here?" is also normal and it would take some time to get rid of it. My advice. Never be too harsh on yourself and give yourself some time (even months and years) to become accustomed with the weird stuff and language.

 

I had the same problem (so did all our friends here in KF). I didn't understand a thing and was upset because I was uncoordinated and totally from another planet. I almost quit.

 

Then I came to the "right" conclusion that I can do what so many people do. I'm smart and I'll teach my body to follow all the stuff. I went home, typed google.com and looked for shotokan. EVERYTHING. I've printed stuff about it. History, dictionaries, techniques, diagrams, you name it. I took my dictionary to the bathroom (I'm kinda inspired there ) and learnt the weird words on my throne. came to my room and read about degrees and shoulder widths and left legs and so on.

 

The next karate session I was the smartest there I even discussed with sensei about some stuff and he was appaled I knew all this. And since he's amazed

 

I went home, got the stuff I knew and rehearsed like for a show. I've got pictures for my katas and did them all over again. I went to the class and asked a higher rank to help me, see if I'm doing well. They are nice people and it's good to know to use everything you can to succeed. It's also good to repeat home katas only when you know the way to do. Never learn something wrong because it would be hard to "unlearn" and relearn the stuff right.

 

After some time I've got into another problem. I was a walking enciclopedia, but I still moved like a puppet. I had to give my body time to keep up with my knowledge. It's a long way, but it's fun.

 

So don't despair. Set some goals ant try to reach them, work hard and always ask around. You are not alone in this journey. From time to time you'll see you can do stuff you couldn't perform before and these bits of success would be your food and water for the long journey.

 

Good luck and may you become what you dream to be ... and keep us posted

[ramymensa]

Double post again. Sorry

[wing chun kuen man]

Britnoob,

 

Remember this if you never have a bad lesson then there is something wrong. Bad lessons are a part of learning martial arts as well as anything else. It means that you don´t know and you are going through the learning process. So keep on training and improving.

 

Good luck,

 

Wing Chun Kuen Man

[RaidenTB]

Your body is learning, just wait a couple more lessons and things will start to fall into place. It's called motorical learning. You have to repeat stuff a number of times, before your body memorizes it. It could be 10, a 100 or more times, it depends on a person. It always takes some time Once you get there, you will finally be able to start polishing what you know, it will be much easier to learn new kicks and tricks and besides - you'll find that it will take you a whole lot less to learn your next kata.

 

I started to train a month and a half later than everybody else in my class. At the beginning I was mixing up everything. My arms and legs were never in the right place (at the right time...). I was uncoordinated, confused and tought I was the worst student my sensei had ever seen... But - where is will - there is a way. Every day I repeated everything I've learned. I turned our living room into temporary gym and it was sort of impossible to watch tv with me kicking around I rented books from the library, browsed the net, asked questions... And eventually it paid off.

 

So don't worry. Just keep up the good work, keep trying and you will get there.

 

Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration. I guess it's the same with karate. Talent is nothing without hard work.

[BJJShotoshe]

Hey!

 

Don't worry so much about it. Everyone has thier "bad days". Just think of this... A "bad day" has been experienced because there is something else that you need to learn that is more important, you just have to find out what it is and work on it. Believe me, I have been a second purple belt for six months or so and the average learning speed is five months, and thats not the bad thing. I only have one stripe!! It makes me sooo mad , i still have four more stripes to go, but I know that this is happening to teach me something that I need to know, it just chose, in my opinion, the wrong time to do it. But hey! I am learning a lot of stuff the black belts usually lear for thier testing, getting ahead of the game!

[Wise Master]

I'm still very new to karate, today was only my 7th lesson (hour) so I'm still at the stage where I feel very out fo place and often question what I'm doing and if I'm kidding myself thinking I can progress.

 

Anyway, todays training didn't go well, no particular incident made it a bad session, i jus seemed to be so far off the pace it was unreal. I seem to be the only one who can't do stuff, and I know that it's mostly because I'm by far the most inexperienced student there, but that doesn't make me feel any better.

 

It's very basic stuff like getting used to the physical side like grabbing, it's still very alien to me. And the fact that 7 lessons in I am still more often than not looking around at everyone else during the katas.

 

Don't get me wrong, I didn't want instant results, it's not that. I'm prepared to work at it for years and I understand it takes dedication, it's just that sometimes it feels like no matter how long I try I'll never pick it up.

 

What do you guys do after a bad lesson? Is it a common thing? Do you ever feel down? I can't wait for the next one so i can put things right.

]]

 

Don't worry friend feel you are trainning and go with the flow.