How to Learn Martial Arts Effectively: 7 Things to Get YOU Primed BEFORE Class Like a Champ

February 28, 2022 Danny Indio M.B. Commentary, Sports, Training Tips 0

Danny Indio M.B. shadowboxing

Any able-bodied person with a functioning brain is capable of mastering their art if they stick with it. This is because your brain can store almost limitless information and memories. According to research, “the human brain consists of about 86 billion neurons. Each neuron forms connections to other neurons, which could add up to 1 quadrillion (1,000 trillion) connections. Over time, these neurons can combine, increasing storage capacity.” (Northwestern Medicine) When we learn and practice something, whether it’s academic or physical, our neurons are activated and pathways are formed. The more we study and review what we learn, the more efficient and effective these pathways become.  Therefore, our goal when we learn and practice is to create the best conditions for our brains and body to absorb and store all of that knowledge and experience. This is a key element of an approach to learning physical movements and skills that I developed known as the Master Your Moves (MYM) Method.

If you prime your body properly before class, you will learn quicker and more efficiently, perform better over time, and enjoy your time training significantly more no matter what style you do. Like any successful person will tell you, so much depends on the prep work you do before the learning begins. Below are some tips or hacks (in bold) to get you primed, focused, and tuned in so that your brain and body can learn and perform to their best potential.

  1. ATTITUDE
    • One of the reasons we admire professional athletes like Michael Jordan or Tom Brady is their champion mindset; a mindset that can seemingly will victory into existence. Mindset is key because where your mind leads, your body will follow. Now, most of us will not be competing in a high-stakes professional tournament like the Super Bowl, the World Series, or the UFC, but you may be fighting for your life one day. What’s more high-stakes than life or death? And so, even if you’re just doing martial arts for fun or fitness, you should still have a champion mindset. That champion mindset will come in handy in every stage of your training, whether you’re taking belt tests, thinking of skipping class, or, most importantly, fighting for your life or your loved one’s life.
    • In The Cus D’Amato Mind, Rahiem Bailey of Reemus Boxing lists out a number of characteristics that make a champion. These 8 are the ones that I would encourage all martial artists to cultivate:
      1. Discipline (to stick with your training, at least until you achieve your goals).
      2. Focus (on your desires, expectations, and demands of your art).
      3. Adaptability (to face different challenges and try new solutions).
      4. Heart (to push through your previous limits).
      5. Self-belief (to convince yourself you are worthy to be a champion and can achieve it if you truly want it).
      6. Open-mindedness (to wisdom and knowledge in even unlikely places because you will always be learning something no matter how good you get).
      7. Passion (for your art so that you not only love the results of your training, like victory in the ring or promotion to a higher belt, but also love the process of training, like putting in the work to improve your fitness and form).
      8. Confidence (in your skills and self so that setbacks, losses, failures, or injuries can’t undermine your sense of worth).
  2. GOAL
    • We all know that feeling of excitement when you first sign up for a course or a gym. That’s motivation! And motivation is key to get you up off the couch and out into the school or the gym. But what happens when the motivation wanes? You stop doing the course or going to the gym, little by little, until you simply just stop. We all know that feeling too, unfortunately.
    • To sustain our motivation so it doesn’t wane, we need attitude as I described above, and goals. Goals give you something to aim for and then celebrate when you achieve it. The trick is in setting good and realistic goals.
    • To set good and realistic goals, do the following:
      1. Tailor your goals to your aspirations.
      2. Focus on mastery goals over competition goals. Mastery goals involve focusing on improving your performance whereas competition goals are focused on defeating others or winning trophies and belts.
      3. Have short-term goals, intermediate goals, and long-term goals to give your training direction and a sense of progress. Refer to your school’s syllabus or talk with your instructors to get help in setting realistic goals throughout your training.
      4. Do not make too many goals at once. Focus on 1-2 mastery goals, 1 competition goal (maybe), 1-2 short-term goals, 1-2 intermediate goals, and 1-2 long-term goals.
      5. Be willing to modify your goals. You may find them too easy or too hard and it’s ok to update them as needed.
      6. Use the SMARTER acronym as developed by researchers Edwin Locke, Gary Latham, and others, to set goals that are:
        1. Specific (i.e. clear and concise)
        2. Measurable (i.e. you can determine if you achieved the goal)
        3. Achievable (i.e. you have made allowances for factors out of your control such as injury or work-life balance)
        4. Realistic (i.e. you have the suitable level of fitness, knowledge, and resources to achieve the goal)
        5. Time-bound (i.e. you can measure progress over time and your goal is achievable within a set amount of time too)
        6. Exciting (i.e. it excites you to accomplish the goal and put in the work to do so).
        7. Recorded (i.e. you wrote down your goal in a training journal, like the JIMI Notebook, calendar, or app).
  3. TIMELINESS
    • This is the easiest thing to do but it will give you a massive boost in priming you up before class. The tip is simple, GET TO CLASS EARLY. Aim for at least 15 minutes early. Getting to class early will allow you to:
      1. Be relaxed before the class. If you’re relaxed for class, you will be in a positive mental state and ready to learn and perform. This contrasts with the stress you’d feel if you were getting to class right as it starts, or even worse, late.
      2. Find out what the class will be about from the teacher. Once you do, you can mentally prepare for it by rehearsing mentally, reviewing your notes, or tailoring your body’s warmup for it.
  4. REVIEW
    • According to Dr. Roger Greenaway, an expert on training teachers, “Reviewing is any process that helps you to make use of personal experience for your learning and development. These reviewing processes can include [things like]: reflecting on experience [and] analyzing experience.” To incorporate reviewing into your pre-class warm-up, do the following:
    • Take 5 minutes to review your most recent or most relevant notes. If you don’t have notes, then just reflect on what you know about the topic to be covered. If you are also going to spar, come up with a game plan to practice a particular technique or combo.
    • Reviewing regularly will make it easy to link what is covered in your class to what you already know. More importantly, it will take the knowledge and skills in your short-term memory and put it bit-by-bit into your long-term memory.
  5. RELAX
    • A relaxed person can learn better because relaxation reduces or eliminates stress. To relax before class, take at least 2 minutes to go through a calming and breathing routine. You can do it sitting, kneeling, or laying down. There are many methods of meditation out there so I will leave it up to you to pick one that works best for you. Whatever you end up doing, it should result in you feeling relaxed AND ready to rock.
  6. REHEARSE
    • Stanford researchers have found that mental rehearsals prepare our mind for real-world action. Mental rehearsals are a form of visualization that consists of imagining yourself performing a task as opposed to actually doing it. To use it effectively, you need to have some experience, knowledge, and skill in the act you are mentally rehearsing.
    • After reviewing your notes and relaxing yourself, you can engage in a few minutes of mental rehearsals by doing the following:
      1. Remain in the position you used to relax yourself.
      2. Now start saying positive mantras to yourself like, “I can do this,” or “I am confident.”
      3. Next, imagine what you will see just before you begin the task and then see yourself performing the task from a 1st person point of view.
      4. Repeat the task about 5-7 times before moving on to another task or ending the mental rehearsal session. During your mental rehearsal, you can speed things up, slow things down, or isolate certain movements, if you want.
  7. PREPARATION
    • Now that you have reviewed, feel relaxed, and rehearsed some moves you anticipate or know will be in class, use the remaining time before class to warm up your body. Don’t just wait for the instructor to warm you up. Be pro-active.
    • So, with the time remaining do the following:
      1. Warm your body up using a routine that preps your body up for the stuff you will do in class. For example, if you are doing Filipino Kali double sticks, it makes sense to concentrate a lot on getting your wrists, forearms, and shoulders ready compared to if you’re doing Taekwondo or Muay Thai.
      2. If a certain body part is sore or recovering from an injury, prep that part of your body, safely.
      3. Do some light shadowboxing or forms practice. After reviewing, relaxing, rehearsing, and prepping your body with a good warm-up, physically perform what you’ve mentally rehearsed.

And there you have it; a pre-class routine to get you primed to learn and perform like the champ you are. To sum up, before your class starts, get there early (with a winning attitude and a desire to work towards your goals), find out what the class will be about, review your notes, relax your mind, rehearse mentally, and prep your body. Do these things consistently and you will shine.

I’d love to hear about your results when you do this routine or if you have a different pre-class routine? Let me know in the comments below. And click on these links to see what to do DURING and AFTER class to enhance your learning and performance. Until then, Make Moves or Meditate.

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About Danny Indio M.B. 6 Articles
Hi, I’m Danny Indio M.B. and I am a Jeet Kune Do instructor and the author of Mixed Martial Arts Fighting Techniques. While I was in the USMC, I became an official instructor in MCMAP aka the Marine Corps Martial Arts Program. I credit my success in learning, teaching, and fighting to the different scientific and traditional studies, tools, methods and notebooks I discovered and used over the years. Everything I've learned and practiced to this point, have led to my development of the The Master Your Moves (MYM) Method and the J.I.M.I. (Journal of Instant Memorization Input) Notebook. And I'm still learning all the time... ;)

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