Mastery
The goal of martial artists.
The most dedicated martial artists don’t just turn up to class, train and then go home. They live and breathe martial arts. It’s not so much something they do, but something they are.
A significant part of that dedication to and embodiment of the multifaceted benefits of martial arts is the student’s ability and willingness to train between the classes in order to reinforce their learning and accelerate their progress.
Short version: email evolutionarymartialartsuk@gmail.com to request access, then click here to access your premium content.
Long version: read on…
All in Good Time
The common figure quoted is that it takes 10,000 hours to master a skill. That’s 6,667 weekly lessons. That’s 128 years of training once a week for 1 and a half hours. Consider further that martial arts is comprised of a great many skillsets. You would need multiple lifetimes of training once a week in order to master martial arts to a respectable standard.
This is where adopting martial arts as a lifestyle comes in.
That is where mastery is found.
Let’s consider that the student, instead of just coming once a week to an EMA class, also does half an hour twice a week. That brings them down to 77 years of training. Still a long time, but at least now it’s within a feasible lifespan!
Let’s consider now that the student finds an hour at the weekend. That brings it down to 55 years.
Perhaps that student does half an hour five days a week instead of just twice. This needn’t be especially difficult to factor in: many simple drills can be worked on while listening to a podcast or audiobook, watching TV, etc. That’s now 38 years.
Perhaps that student finds a couple of hours on Saturdays and Sundays. 24 years.
It’s clear to see the end result of putting more time in: the more time dedicated to mastering a skill, the quicker the progress the student enjoys. Finding some time at home during mornings, evenings and/or weekends can feasibly reduce the time it takes to master a skill from 128 years to just 24.
Some of us may even be in the privileged position of being able to find more time than that. I used to average around 22 hours a week of training, which would bring the time to mastery to less than 9 years.
That’s All Well and Good, BUT…
(insert your circumstances, barriers and difficulties here)
As I write this, I can almost hear you from here before I’ve even published the page.
“How can I possibly dedicate so much time to my training? I have _____ to do, and I also need to _____, and then there’s _____…”
For better or for worse, we live in a fast-paced, hectic, overwhelming, overcomplicated and often very unhealthy and even toxic modern world. Our jobs demand more from us than we can give, there’s more and more to do in terms of life admin, and many of us end up without enough time to even look after our health (physical, mental, social…) as well as we’d like to. On average, adults in the UK worked for 37 hours a week in 2023. Put into our calculations from above, that gives us mastery in our careers in 5 years, but that doesn’t leave too much time for … well, everything else.
The Solution – Blended Learning
We need an accelerator.
If only there was a tried-and-tested way to vastly accelerate the process of learning and gaining mastery in skillsets…
If only this was evidence-based and backed by years of academic research…
If only this was available to all Evolutionary Martial Arts members right now…
Blended Learning is when students combine the benefits of in-person learning in class with online learning at home. There are many online courses out there for martial arts, but the general consensus is that a purely online approach can never prepare a student well for a successful martial arts learning experience. However, having access to specific online content for each point on the syllabus, broken down into each grading, with detailed instruction and ideas of training methods and optimal drills to support the best possible progress is a game-changer. With this approach, we can vastly accelerate the learning process and greatly enhance the quality of our training at home, ensuring that we’re addressing misconceptions and training at home as well as we do in class. This is also great for any week when a student misses a class, as they still have access to training content which ensures they can’t fall behind or lose the progress they’ve made.
Free Content – Try Before You Buy
Below are some examples of beginners’ content that is free for anyone to access:
Research on the Benefits of Blended Learning:
Guo & Liao. (2020). Video use in online and blended courses: a qualitative synthesis. Educational Technology & Society, 23(1), 1-14
Toyama et al. (2013). Evaluation of evidence-based practices in online learning: A meta-analysis and review of online learning studies. U.S. Department of Education.
Means and Toyama et al. (2010). Mixing in-class and online learning: Content meta-analysis of outcomes for hybrid, blended and flipped courses. Teachers College Record, 112(3).
Mayer. (2009). Multimedia learning (2nd ed.). Cambridge University Press.
Bonk & Zhang. (2006). Introducing blended learning: A review and annotated bibliography, in Bonk & Graham (Eds.). (2006). The handbook of blended learning: Global perspectives, local practices (pp. 3-12). Pfeiffer.
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