Pushing your personal limits

Chatting with my wife over lunch today, we were discussing how tough it is for the average, un-athletic person to pick up a martial art as demanding as boxing or BJJ. I thought the conversation was important enough to put it into the written word so here is the jist of the conversation (from my perspective).

Over the years of training (24 and counting) in various martial arts has given me the opportunity to observe human nature at its best and worse.

Some people are attracted to martial arts due to childhood dreams, romantic notions of being the weaponless hero, the Bruce Lee iconic symbol and many other reasons. Not everyone is attracted to this "rough and tough" activity, and as my wife puts it, even she was surprised, as are her family and friends, on hearing that she partakes in karate and Brazilian Jiu Jitsu classes. They most often saw her in very feminine activities such as dancing, handicrafts, knitting, cooking and so on so this is a pretty extreme move on her part, no doubt to some some influence from me. Is that a bad thing?

In any case, the conversation continued along the lines of why people would continue the practice knowing full well that they can be injured, or cause injury to others, and so on. My response was it is a personal journey to seek your limits on two levels: physical and emotional.

On the physical challenge, we seek to discover how far we can push ourselves, our strength, endurance, stamina, speed, reaction, or even if we are injured, how soon we can recover, or even continue to train while injured (I'm sure I'm not the only one guilty of this).

On the emotional level, we seek to see how long we can remain calm and out-strategize our opponent, without shrinking into a shell or losing our cool, getting angry or out of control due to fired up emotions.

I've seen people storm out of a sparring match after losing, I've seen people remain so calm you'd think they had passed out when they should be more active. People do the strangest things and often the opposite reaction from what I think they should be doing.

In the years to come, will they be the ones observing and commenting on what they see on the mats as I am doing now?

In your own martial journey, have you pushed yourself to your personal limts, both physically and emotionally? To the very edge where you feel you're about to lose it? Or have your stayed within your comfort zone, stopped training when you felt you were approaching it too fast and with no control?

She continued by commenting that she has never seen me "lose it". She knows why I can't afford to get physically injured (because then I can't lead the classes or provide personal training) or lose control emotionally (probably bad for customer relations) to cuss out someone.

This training goes a long way in forging your personality, physical and emotional, in constantly exposing you to stresses that tests your limits and how you handle it. "Callousing" your body as much as your personality, helping you to understand the value of remaining cool-headed and calm when you need it the most (under repetitive heavy stress) so you can think clearly and act decisively to defense, escape or counter a position carries over well into what you do on a daily basis at home, with family, at work, etc.

When a family member, loved one, co-worker or employer "attacks" you, it is usually with words of complaint, of concern or of things to do. How you handle this type of stress reflects on how well you can see the correlation between your real life and what goes on in the gym.

Some handle the pressures well, some do not just as some people see this parallel lines between playing in the gym and inter-personal relationships at home.

Early on, I realized the value of these lessons but never quite managed to put them into words until now. I hope you can see the sense of how valuable these lessons the martial arts can teach you and how they extend far beyond the walls of the gym. In many ways, it shapes you and continually polishes your character to reveal the potential that we all possess inside.

Best training,

Vince