The mental state is one of the single most important factors in optimizing development. What do we mean by that?
There are three entities that you should be constantly focused on while training in a group class setting or just training with someone in general:
1) Yourself: by yourself we mean, you should primarily be focusing on your own development rather than watching higher ranking students to see what they are doing wrong in terms of their literal technical executions. It has occurred in the past when we see the person (let’s call him or her, the enthusiastic fault-finder) himself should be working on many issues of their own, and yet they are trying to tell their higher ranking partner how to do something right. When it comes to focusing on yourself as one of the first three entities, there are several things you should be highly cognizant of :
a) your own technical executions
b) your own attributes (e.g., foot work, body mechanics distance control, ….etc) whether they are where they should be.
c) your own psychological competency and adequacy. This means watching out whether you are moving: spastically, with impatience, with frustration, with lack of attention, with uncertainty, with an unproductive and destructive motive, introversionly, extroversionly, carelessly, and etc.
2) Your training partner and injury prevention. This means asking yourself whether the manner by which you are going about training with your partner(s) would result in injury. In short, anticipate injury prevention for yourself and others while training. This still goes back to yourself again, because if your partner gets injured, it would first be you who will have one less person to work with; consequently, it would be your own development (other’s too) that gets hampered.
3) Equipments. This means protecting all equipments. For example, if you are wearing shorts that have zippers, you would be destroying the mats while rolling. If you are hitting a wing chun dummy, wearing boxing gloves as though it is a heavy bag, you would be breaking the dummy. Wing Chun dummies are not heavy bags, and they are not designed for developing boxing power as delivered by boxers. One other example would be bashing your sticks hard at other people’s sticks. With this approach you would be destroying your own sticks as well as your partner’s. Moreover, hitting hard with your sticks is not a proof of your skills whatsoever; it is your timing and touch, your footwork, accuracy, distance control, and so on that would prove your real skills. I can teach any bum in 5 minutes on how to put his full body behind a stick and swing it hard across someone’s face. In fact there are many bums out there who don’t even need that 5 minutes instruction to swing the stick hard. They are already hard-hitters. So, save your sticks and your energy for more important attributes and skills.
In conclusion, if you keep the three main elements above while training with partners, you would definitely be developing a balanced and an optimized mental state, not to mention, a healthy perspective for personal development and even longevity.
Coach Shahram