Perseverance and Indomitable Spirit Tipping Points to Success

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
(Free-Press-Release.com) November 6, 2010 -- By Cathy Chapaty
Guest columnist

If you’ve ever witnessed a student’s growth in the martial arts, you know that powerful breakthroughs can occur at any moment – that a mental, physical, and spiritual tipping point of sorts can happen in a heartbeat.

It happened to Omar. It can happen to you, too.

A stoic, hardworking Taekwondo orange belt, Omar once again faced the thing that proved to be a stumbling block during his last martial arts promotion test: a 7-inch wide, ¾-inch thick whitewood pine board.

With shoulder-length brown hair and stringy bangs, Omar is a perfectionist who rarely smiles. Nine times out of 10, he’s serious. Last year, the 11-year-old was voted “Hardest Working Man on the Mat” as part of the school’s annual Tenet Awards. No one has ever questioned that Omar works hard.

Despite his efforts, Omar has at times come up short on his goals. For him, the hardest spiritual hurdle to overcome in martial arts has been accepting and understanding the universal reality of imperfection. Not winning every game or contest or passing every test with a perfect score has been hard for him to swallow.

As a white belt, Omar always cried the moment he realized he had not performed – a block, a kick, or a form – perfectly. During game time on the mat, it was excruciating for him to be the runner-up.

He wanted to win. Every time.

Failure and imperfection are part of life, though, and I don’t hide that from my students. Still, it’s hard to teach 10- and 11-year-olds the other universal reality: Winners at life are simply people who have failed once, twice, maybe hundreds of times, but who still rose to their feet and tried again.

Earlier this year when Omar tried to break a board with a side kick for his orange belt, he struggled. He cried. He looked and felt defeated. Ultimately he broke the board, but not until I changed the technique from a side kick to an ax kick.

I could see he was still battling memories of his last side kick shortcoming. And when Omar marched up to me in the dojang and proclaimed, “I’m not confident in my break,” I knew he was destined for a breakthrough.

Here’s why: He said he didn’t have confidence, but I could see in his eyes that he was determined to try again anyway, and to me, that’s what was important. Omar had the will and the indomitable spirit to persevere.

We got to work: First I had Omar kick the power bag hard, repeatedly coaching him to use the blade and heel of the foot. When he delivered good technique, I delivered an avalanche of praise.

Bam!

“GOOD!” I exclaimed several times, offering Omar high-five palm slaps.

Next I pulled out an 8 ½ x 11-inch sheet of notebook paper. I use paper because it’s a great follow-through tool. The student can see and hear the results of his kicks through the paper, and therefore gets used to kicking through the target.

“This is no different from the wood board you’re going to break in a minute,” I reminded him. “It’s the exact sam

Kids Martial Arts     perseverance     taekwondo houston