Do YOU Have What it Takes To Become a Martial Arts Master?

VIDEO: See These Martial Arts Masters Fighting!

You may never truly master a martial art. Sure, you can be a “master” or a “grand master” but every time you train you might learn just a little more and you’ll never know absolutely everything. And without knowing everything, you cannot master everything.

Martial Arts Life #1: Becoming A Martial Arts Master In Life

What is a master?

Thoughts come to mind of Bruce Lee or Morihei Ueshiba or even more mythical masters of legend. But what does it mean to become a master? Can you ever truly master a martial art? I hope that through this post we can look more fully into mastery and how to begin on the path.

Many people cringe at the word “master“. To master something denotes having it all–as if you’re done and there’s nothing left to get from it. How lame would it be to dedicate years of study to something, only to reach the end and be done with it. I guess that’s the beauty of this life. It’s hard to master ANYTHING. Just when you think you’ve really got it all there’s always another layer to peal back if you’re willing to do the work and look.

Yet there does seem to be a certain class of person who deserves the title of master. A person so ahead of the game that he can focus on bringing others up with him. A Martial Arts Hero. Even men like Lee and Ueshiba were constantly demonstrating their openness to learning more. They were always pursuing something deeper than what they already had. Yet they have been a hero to thousands, if not millions. They’ve inspired people to achieve far more with their lives.

As the greatest secret to mastery comes in the fact that the master is a simple human, like all around them, with the same successes and failures, with similar worries and concerns, with normal everyday responsibilities – he has to gladly sacrifice a huge amount of his private time to the teaching of students. While a martial arts practitioner may train a few times a week, go to the gym, enjoy family time, etc. The sensei devotes all of his spare time – and some not so spare to the dojo and the improvement of others. He spends most of his time giving and coaching and training others – and THAT is what makes his special. He is just like you and everyone else – except that besides his regular life – he gives his heart and soul to the dojo and the students. But this still does not make him a master.

So what makes one a martial arts master?

Nothing! Nobody ever masters the martial arts. Nobody will ever be perfect and perform flawlessly all the time in every self defense circumstance. The reality is that it takes so long to truly become a technical master, that the physical body begins to lose its edge by the time the technical edge arrives.

The Martial Arts are the same way. If you study Karate, you don’t know Kung Fu, or Escrima… and therefore you don’t know and can’t call yourself a Martial Arts master.

You could even master taekwondo, or some other art, but that wouldn’t make you a master of Martial Arts.

The fighting disciplines, you see, are the whole subject, and an individual art is a piece of the subject, a slice of the whole pie, as it were.

So, you have a black belt? Well done, that is the first step… what are you going to do now?

Or, you are a Karate Master… what’s next?

So how many martial arts do you have to study to become a master? This writer believes the number to be four. And the four disciplines should be different disciplines.