What have you contributed by Jeremy M. Talbott

After a class is finish, it is not unusual for a parent, or student, to come and talk to me about how things are progressing.  I enjoy these talks because it gives me the time to give them positive feed back to what they are doing right as well as give them my views as what I feel they need to work on in terms of physical and mental applications.  I give them tips on what they can work on at home in order to help improve and more times than not, they go home and practice.  Now with every one parent or student like aforementioned, I have at least two that the only time I see them is when they come up and wonder why the student has not promoted yet.  My first, and sometimes only, answer to this is "What have you contributed to your studies outside of class?"

I also enjoy this time because the majority of the time they will tell me either nothing or they will start making up excuses to why they can not practice outside the school.  I just had an example like this happen.  We just had a promotion test where one student was promoted to his next rank.  When he received his belt, I had a mother of another student, who started the exact day as the promoted student, come up to me complaining as to why her child did not get to promote.  I told her that the child has not been to any of the review testing and that I have not seen him at class at least a week prior to the testing.  I then of course asked my favorite question; what has he contributed to his studies outside of class?  She explained the reason for the absences, but as expected, she really did not have any reason for him not practicing at home.  I could see she was upset so I asked her if she would be upset with his math teacher if he was not progressing because he did not do his homework which resulted in bad test scores.  She naturally said no.  So I asked her how she can be upset with us for the same reason.

Effort in the class is important, but it is the effort that you place outside of class which will be the key factor in progressing.  If you go to your job and just do the required work, you will get by and occasionally you may get a promotion or raise.  However if you make an extra effort to do more than the requirement you find that you are promoted a bit more often along with other praises and raises.  School is the same.  You can learn your assignment in class and do the basic homework and you will be ok.  It is when you do extra problems or study 10 minutes more after you finished your assignments, that you will find a better progression in your learning.  Martial arts are no different.  The more you put into it, the more you get out of it.  No one is asking you to be a workaholic or a study nerd whose life revolves around school, nor are we asking you to dedicate every waking moment of free time to your martial arts.  It just takes a small amount extra effort to go a long way.  Your teachers, bosses, co-workers and instructors can only contribute so much to your growth.  For you to reach that next level, you must be the one to make the extra contributions.  So the next time you are not progressing just ask yourself, what have you contributed?