Weeks 7 to 10

Work Towards Proficiency

In this stage of your training... you continue training, moving from familiarity to proficiency.

Going from the familiarity of a technique or exercise to memory and proficiency of the material is a goal throughout your training. This is achieved by keeping in mind these primary tenets for success. With that in mind, here is our basic formula for success.

1. Commitment and affirmation! Be dedicated! In setting a goal you are expressing a dream or ambition, but to make the goal a reality, well, that takes dedication. With six weeks in, you are probably getting a good feel for the entire scope of the curriculum. This is the time when some students start to slack and it is critical to stay focused on the end goal of becoming a yellow belt. For this to happen it is a good ideal to constantly remind yourself that everyday you practice, you are one day closer to earning your belt. This is the motivation to keep you going and a good mental picture- see yourself with the yellow belt on! This can be reinforced by making sure to use the Student Log as a journal. Make sure to include what you watched, practiced, and observations about your training. This will give you a journal of your journey and lend some perspective.

2. Quality of technique is the most important ingredient to technical excellence. You should always be referencing the instructional videos as often as possible. Look for differences in what you are doing in contrast to the videos. This is key as it provides the example of what your technique should look like. As a student moves forward, there is a tendency to assume you know all the elements of a technique and, thus, not feel the need to reference the videos as often. This is a mistake! Constantly referring to them helps to assure that you are staying true to the correctness of the technique. Watch, practice, watch, compare, correct, practice; this pattern should be used constantly.

3. Frequency of your training always has a direct impact on how well you do in martial arts. The more you practice, the better! At this point, you should be practicing three times a week or more. If you are in a group class, you should try to practice at least twice a week away from the group practices. Keep in mind, this is minimum, the more you can find time to practice, the better.

4. Be creative! Change up your routine to keep it interesting. Do a mixture of different parts of your curriculum, but make sure to routinely do all elements of the curriculum. Use drills and tips that periodically pop up in the Tips and Other Information section and Achievements section.

2. Test Yourself

It is important to test yourself regularly. As mentioned before, compare and contrast constantly using the videos. In addition, if you belong to a group, have fellow students and especially the mentor give you feedback often. If you are a minor, your parents should also view videos with you and give you feedback. It is a combination of all of these efforts that will help get you to a point that you should feel that you are beginning to memorize execution and sequence of technique.

Testing yourself can be as simple as seeing how much of any part of your curriculum that you can perform on your own without any aid to writing down the order of the techniques on a piece of paper from memory. Another ideal is to print the pictogram sheets from the Student File Library. Then take a quick glance at the sheet, then put it down and see how far you get, when you get stuck look at the sheet. You can see if you can do techniques and exercises by just listening to the audio, too. Play a video, but don’t look at the monitor. See if you can go through the techniques with just verbal cues.

Keep focused and stay motivated! You’ll almost half way there!

Weeks 7 to 10

Goals and Benchmark

Your goal for these four weeks is to become proficient (not perfect) at performing the material in Basics 1, Forms, and Combos. Again, remember to frequently check the Tips & Other Information section and the Achievements section.

By the end of this training stage, you should be able to perform most of the techniques from Basics 1, Forms, and Combos with only a verbal or visiual cue. You should have 20 hours of logged training time.