Are You Experienced?

[sensei8]

By whose definition are we? Being held to some measure is plausible in how one is gauged.

To be knowledgeable or to be experienced or whatever other type is a barometer to some degree waits for one to garner one way or another.

Each day, no each second, one gains some type of experience in whatever they're involved with/in.

It's the quality over the quantity and it must be achieved where one gains substance all the time. We slip and we trip and we sometimes fall. It's how we learn and what we learn that differs one from another.

Your thoughts please.

[xo-karate]

I have no problem claiming to be experienced.

I learn new things every day and being 55 - It's a lot of learning - and experience.

Learning is easy, but forgetting is even easier. So I've learned a lot, but can't do much:-)

Experience is helps me to realize it.

[Harkon72]

I have over 20 years of MA experience, but then only some.

[tallgeese]

I'm going with yes. Largely due to the fact I've been training in something since longer than a lot of the people I'm on the mat with these days have been alive.

On a more serious note, I've got the opportunity to go to the dan grades in two arts closing in on another within a couple of years, competed in multiple venues, and had detailed to cursory exposure to multiple other arts. I've gotten to pressure test tactics in full contact comps and my job has allowed me to do this under live conditions. This does not mean I'm the best at anything? Of course not, I train with guys every day better than me in fact. It just means I've had good chances to train, and utilize thru legal means, those skills. That experience.

Now, on the flip side, experience is a moving target. Have I experienced a camp for a professional fight? No. World Championship pressure? No. Owning a school and worrying about keeping it open? No.

So there's plenty I haven't done. My experienced can be useful to people looking for certain things. I would not be "experienced" enough for others with different goals. It depends.

[Wastelander]

To some extent, I would call myself experienced. In martial arts, I am more experienced than my kohai, and less experienced than my senpai and instructors, and outside of our dojo there are thousands upon thousands of people I am less experienced than. There are also some things about the martial arts that I have less experience in, or no experience in. It all really depends on how you view it

[Chunmonchek]

We're all experienced to one degree or another.

In the 70's, I'd ask what belt are you?

In the 80's, after I thought I knew more, I'd ask, how many years have you trained?

In the 90's I figured out some had x years of experience, and others had one year experienced x times, and stopped asking.

[Tkdampbjj]

I consider myself to be experienced, but I still have a ton to Learn. Life time student.

[DWx]

We all have a unique collection of experiences that no-one else has. The things we've done in our Martial Arts training and the things we've done through life aren't the same set of experiences anyone else will have.

Personally, I'd say everyone is experienced to some extent. You might not have been around as long as some and haven't experienced some things but then you've also done things other people might not have. The important thing, IMO, is that you keep experiencing new things and learning.

[bushido_man96]

I have some teaching experience, and some learning experience. Fight experience, I'm short on. My tournament experiences, especially sparring, are by and large not good. I do have some work experience, but not to the extent that tallgeese would have.

I do think I can teach my current system, and I do think that given the chance, I could put together a good system that would help out the students that would come to learn. I also have experience enough to tell them what I don't know, and where to find that stuff out, too.

[Mantas]

I would say yes. Although there is still a lot of things to learn about martial arts, as I'm only 24. But I'm spending all my time to learn something new about it, I have tried many different types of martial arts and now developing my blog and sharing my experience with others. I can easily say I'm addicted to martial arts.