Tools To Use, Not Hoops To Jump Through

Yesterday was my second time this year doing a mock run of the black belt fitness test. Doing it every Saturday is a  new habit I’m working towards forming. I was just over half way through when I got to the kicks, everyone’s favourite part. I ended up having to stop myself part way through the kicks to rethink what I was doing. I was noticing too many kicks that didn’t feel right, they were borderline acceptable. Which is when the big attitude bomb hit me, my attitude was all wrong. I was just throwing my leg at the bag as many times as I could in a minute. Why? Because it’s part of the fitness test and I gotta do the fitness test today. It was only the second day and I had already lost the intent that caused me to want to do this in the first place, I had mentally made it a hoop. I had to stop and ask myself where am I and what am I doing in order to find that intent I lost. Why am I throwing all these kicks? Not just to tire myself out, but to continually improve my technique, accuracy, speed, and stamina. 

Every part of the black belt fitness test is a tool, not a  hoop. The reason I decided to start training for the black belt fitness test again is to continue to use and benefit from those tools. This is why training mindfully is so important, it keeps us in mastery mode. Yesterday was an excellent reminder of that. Because of this I ended up not just throwing as many kicks as I could in the minute, but made sure I completed every kick perfectly no matter how long it took. Doing 50 perfect round kicks as fast as I could made me feel way better than doing 40 just good enough round house kicks in 60 seconds.

Logan Ward