|
Competition
- an important part
of our training, not our ultimate goal.
As our competition season begins in earnest,
especially leading up to the U.S. National Championships in December,
I wanted to take some time to discuss the proper place of competition
in the martial arts. There has certainly been much debate over
this, although the value of two competitors training “live”
with each other, or sparring against a resisting opponent rather
than just practicing forms should have been apparent to everyone
since the decisive victory of Jigoro Kano’s Kodokan Judo
at the Tokyo police tournament of 1886. The Kodokan students practiced
free sparring and the other schools practiced only forms.
Personally, I love competition, because
competition always leads to innovation. Just look at the success
of capitalism over communism during the last century. Without
competition, School A has technique A and School B has technique
B, and both assert that their way is superior. With competition,
the public can see which technique actually works better, and
thus the martial art improves, with other schools free to build
off the base. This is one reason for the rapid technological development
of Taekwondo over the last 30 years. Competition provides an important
‘reality check.’ I know there have been times that
I thought what I was doing was working, only to step into the
ring and find out that my training wasn’t enough. Competition
also teaches us patience, how to deal with adrenaline, how to
figure out an opponent quickly, how to perform even on your bad
days, and builds team spirit. Thus, competition is an important
part of our training.
However, this is really the key. The ultimate
goal of our training is to become a better person and a better
martial artist, not solely competition. This is what distinguishes
Taekwondo from other sports. Competition should be seen as a means
only, not an end in and of itself. Some schools think that the
only purpose of their training is competition. This leads to three
main problems. First, they may engage in behavior at the tournament
that is not frowned on in other sports, but very disrespectful
for Taekwondo. No match is important enough for you to throw your
helmet or cuss out the referee or hit your opponent with a cheap
shot. Consider this your warning that that type of behavior will
not be tolerated by KAT students. Secondly, this exclusive focus
on competition may cause the school to neglect other important
areas of training, such as self defense. Thirdly, if competitions
are seen as the most important thing, people will tend to have
a mental lapse after a tournament is over, and only train hard
once a tournament is coming up. You must train hard all the time,
regardless of when the competition is. Training when others are
resting is the only way to make up ground on people who are better
than you, because before the tournament when everyone is training
hard everyone is progressing.
The last thing I would like to mention
about competition is the terminology. Although this is not strict,
it is proper to refer to people sparring as competitors, athletes,
or sparrers, rather than ‘fighters.’ It is proper
to refer to the match as a match, not a ‘fight.’ The
reason for this is that a sparring match is very different from
a real fight. Olympic Style sparring does not have much to do
with fighting, thus it is not proper to say that someone who is
a good sparrer is a good fighter. Many elite Taekwondo athletes
could be taken down and choked out by someone with only an elementary
knowledge of grappling.
The KAT has historically done very well
in competition, and now it is time for us to step up our training
even more. With the proper attitude, competition can go a long
way towards making us better martial artists.
See Previous Articles
Competition Philosophy
|
