Martial Secrets revealed!!

It's time for a Breakthrough, but how do we go about getting one? Training has to follow a plan. That plan has to develop over time and has to have progression. We start small but move on. This is how we improve physically too, by overloading our bodies. Our bodies love that, we train but if we maintain the intensity and duration we do not improve. We have to use it up, we have to max it out, we have to get uncomfortable and sure enough our body will adapt and develop. These are of course the basic principles of all physical exercise ie weight lifting, cardio training and athletic training, so how do we go about improving on technique? Practice of course, but practice does not always develop technique alone we have to have good practice. Some of my technique has in fact reversed despite my length of training. My butterfly stance (a weird crouching  twisty type of stance seen in the butterfly knife set) has become awful! I used to be alright at it but I carry a hip injury which means I can no longer have a good practice of it. So what can I do? I'm going to have to develop a way in which I can do it without proper technique. I'm going to have to learn how to wing it! It is an essential skill in Martial Arts. Practice a hand block or a kick block, then have your opponent go for you, I mean really go for you and you will see that your practiced movements have had to adapt. Controversial right? Absolutely, we are told that technique always beats brute force. It's not true guys, not in real life. The technique has to adapt but it has to be understood in the first place so that you can adapt it. In the real world, where you are more likely to need your martial arts we are subject to many more factors. Weather, surface, clothing you are wearing, how much you have had to drink etc etc... You will never be technically correct trying to throw a spin kick whilst wearing jeans, on the street, in the rain after 3 pints! But what if you had to, well I can assure you, you adapt. Taking the technique that has been drilled into your muscle memory you will pull something off. It might be cool, it might not, but I can safely say it won't look like the kick you threw at your last grading.
So what is the secret if it isn't in the technique? There is no secret, it all comes down to the training method. What if you had been training how to throw a spin kick whilst wearing jeans, on the street, in the rain after 3 pints? It would look a whole lot nicer than if you hadn't. So what next? how do we get this breakthough? By pressure testing it of course, by having someone try and "do one on you". The merits of pressure testing stuff have been advocated for a long time, but no one ever talks about how much fun it is! You get roughed up, sometimes you fail but always you are forced to wing it! Thats life too, you have to learn for yourself, you have to make mistakes you have to make it up! However you can do it from a place of understanding. That understanding has to come from you though from your own breakthroughs, not because someone else told you it would work but because YOU made it work! Keep training, get as much info as you can and give it a good practice! Todays meditation- a mistake only becomes an error if it is allowed to continue