Ditch The Mental Rolodex
More isn't always better. Memorizing countless techniques hinders understanding, adaptability, and effectiveness. The more you memorize, the less practical it becomes.
Today’s feature column will have zero mentions of gambling or the industry, but if you’re a regular reader, you’ll get how it applies. If you’re not a regular reader, you should still get quite a bit of food for thought out of this column. It will also be free to all subscribers.
It’s a curriculum-based system. That’s how one longtime martial artist described their previous style to me — the system will go unnamed, but martial arts enthusiasts might be able to piece together the system I’m referring to.
A curriculum-based system is one where you advance based on the techniques you know. A new belt means a new set of techniques to memorize and perform.
The problem with a curriculum-based system (outside of always practicing prearranged techniques) is that you eventually run out of techniques and have nothing left to teach the student.
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That was an issue in the early days of martial arts as a business (which started becoming a thing in the 1960s and hit its stride in the 1970s). You’d work with a student for a couple of years, they’d learn your curriculum’s techniques and earn their black belt, and then they’d move on to a new art or open their own school.
That was a problem, but the solution was simple… Add more techniques!
If you have ten really good techniques, you’ll have a student for a year. That’s not good for business.
If you take those ten techniques and make subtle, but noticeable changes, you now have 150 techniques to teach. If your system only has new material up to black belt, you can create a 2nd-degree black belt curriculum with new moves to memorize. Rinse and repeat for the 3rd, 4th, 5th, and subsequent grades. If you require students to memorize them all, you keep that student for ten extra years.
This is how you end up with systems that include 20 katas and 220-something prearranged self-defense techniques, or what I refer to as the Rolodex.
Why the Rolodex is Bad
A Rolodex (or a contacts list in your phone for the younger generation) is a valuable tool that allows you to store a large amount of information in a single, easy-to-access place. The problem is that a Rolodex doesn’t work in a crisis. Although it is easy to access, retrieving information still takes too long. Even the many phone numbers we used to store in our heads aren’t useful in these situations as stress can make them fall out of your head.
A Rolodex of martial arts techniques is just as useless. The average person can punch 3-4 times per second, so by the time you flip through your mental Rolodex of techniques, you’ve already been hit two more times.
Iain Abernethy (one of my favorite martial arts minds) has an excellent analogy for this, noting that his daughter is great at her multiplication tables (which are typically memorized up to 12 times 12), but when he asked what 13 times 12 is, she said, ‘There is no 13 times 12.’ The point being, she had memorized the answers, but still didn’t know how to apply them to new numbers.
The Better Option
As I previously wrote, I use a principles-based approach to training. Technique collectors and choreographed demos can look quite impressive in controlled environments, but what happens when things are unscripted?
“Take a boxer who doesn’t spar and only goes to the gym and hits mitts in prearranged combinations. You’ll notice it immediately if their pad holder deviates from the practiced punch combos…
“If you approach training in a principles-based way, it doesn’t matter when someone goes off-script. The principle remains the same. You're used to anticipating and reacting to the unexpected.”
While the technique-based person mentally flips through their Rolodex for the correct technique (many of which have layers of dust and rust on them), the principle-based person protects their head, crashes in, and tries to take control of the situation.
Look at it this way: Every technique works in theory; principles work in reality.
Why (Some) Martial Arts Schools Use the Rolodex
The Rolodex approach to martial arts is a dangling carrot, and when it is reached, a new carrot magically appears. Most curriculum-based martial arts schools withhold higher material — you can only learn belt-rank-appropriate techniques — Blue Belts are not allowed to do Brown Belt katas, or it’s very frowned upon. Some schools will go so far as not even to let you see particular material performed until you are the appropriate rank.
The material is carefully guarded to prevent students from skipping over lower belt material, or having someone with an excellent memory and possibly some previous martial arts experience in another system, burn through your entire 20-year curriculum in a year or two.
Now, every style, whether it’s boxing, Brazilian jiu jitsu, or traditional karate, has moves to memorize. This goes for all sports. High jumpers have practiced run-ups. Wide receivers have specific routes. Basketball players memorize post moves. Memorization isn’t bad, per se.
Things go sideways when you only memorize techniques. As I said above, in the chaos of a crisis situation, you can’t try to figure out which of the 22 roundhouse defenses you should use.
Furthermore, when you introduce an unknown variable, all of the memorized techniques are useless. You didn’t eat a punch because you weren’t ranked a high enough to learn the technique that is only available to a 3rd-degree black belt; you got punched becuase you don’t understand the principles behind the technique.
Simple is Better
The reason a school might use a curriculum-based approach is that they don’t know the technique and the nuance. They’ve memorized it, but can’t teach the underlying principles. I liken this to copying Japanese kanji or an Egyptian hieroglyph: You can recreate it, but you don’t know what it says.
Furthermore, most of the things you’re memorizing is all fluff.
When it comes to curriculum, boxing is among the shallowest martial arts. Yet, it’s highly effective and one of the most challenging to master. It would take you at most maybe a year to learn the half-dozen punches, slipping and rolling, and its basic footwork. It will take you multiple lifetimes to master those foundational boxing skills.
An okay boxing gym creates cookie-cutter boxers who all do the same thing. they move the same, they punch the same, they assume the same defensive position. A great boxing gym is more individualized. It will continually refine those basics and help a person develop a boxing style that suits them, meets their goals (fitness, community, fight preparation), and is more enjoyable.
A phrase I really like is, “Basic when done correctly looks advanced and elegant.” Another is, “There are no black belt techniques, just techniques done at a black belt level.”
There’s no reason to trickle techniques to students, Rather than being told what, where, when, why, and how to do something, students should be taught how everything fits together and the underlying principles.
Goal Vs. Motivation
My goal as a martial arts instructor is to pass on my knowledge and equip students with the tools to surpass what I know. My motivation as a business owner is to keep them at my school in the long term. It’s not hard to see how those two things can conflict. But it’s also not hard to see how they can be in perfect harmony.
I bank on the student seeing the value of my instruction. It’s not what I’m teaching; it’s how I’m teaching.