A common misconception that many people have is that when thinking of focus and control, we immediately relate it to sparring and physical control. Practiced correctly, it is far more reaching than that. Practiced correctly, focus and control is part of everyday life. It’s not a skill or something that is learned quickly or gained by the disclosure of a secret technique. It is learned through time, training and mindfulness.
Some Chayon Ryu students start as transfers from other schools that train for sport or tournament martial arts where hard contact and scoring points is their primary focus. This often results in injury and students quitting martial arts. This holds true for junior and senior ranking students.
We had a high ranking student who was injured by a junior student and quit training as result of his injury. The junior student was out to build himself up by scoring “points” on a Black Belt, mistakenly thinking this would prove him as good of a martial artist or better than the Black Belt.
On the other hand a Black Belt sparring a junior student who was not exercising good control became angry and decided to “teach the student a lesson” ended up injuring the junior student. The junior student quit training also. In this instance neither student was practicing good control. The junior student was not using good physical control while the Black Belt did not use good mental control and let his anger get in the way of proper training. Proper training would dictate that the Black Belt use his training to calmly stop the round and explain use of control to the junior student and repeat as necessary.
Proper use of control teaches us to not be drawn in to undesirable human emotions and instincts like anger, false pride, humiliation and jealously. Not practicing good focus and control is not being respectful. Students should be respectful and generous to each regardless of rank. Please practice good focus and control in and out of the Dojang.
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