So, How Do You Show Off For Martial-Arts Improvement?
Believe it or not, there are ways to use showing off to your advantage; you can perform for an audience, to better your skills.
If you’re a beginner, and want to head down the path to mastery, where people can not only tolerate, but appreciate you, then start by shifting the focus of “the performance.”
Instead of you passively trying to affect people watching you do martial arts, switch it around, so you are being affected by them.
If your teacher invites people from another school to watch, and this causes you to try to make your techniques a little crisper, then this becomes a good type of showing off.
The people on the sidelines caused you to change your behavior for the better.
You didn’t try to steal the show, and have everyone focus on only what you were doing. You were part of the team; you wanted everyone to look good, for your teacher’s benefit.
It doesn’t have to be a guest group of the teacher. If you invite your family to watch a class, you still want the entire class to look worthy.
You don’t want to project a pompous attitude. You want to show allegiance to the group, while still shining a little. Because you have guests, you try just a little harder than normal, right?
As I said, this is the good kind of showing off.
Summed Up With a Class Joke
The bad kind of showing off is when you do an action to impress others, which results in feeding your ego. The good kind of showing off is when having others watch, causes you to adjust your behavior to perform at your best.
In the former, you want to be singled out, all attention on you. In the latter, you focus on being part of the group, to make everyone look good.
This boils down to: having an audience can be beneficial, if it causes you to try harder … but not in a blatant, showboaty way.
This reminds me of a small, class, practical joke that turned into a good lesson:
The small trick works, if we are starting a repetitive exercise like stomach crunches or punching in the air, and someone walks into the training area.
Let’s say we are counting punches out loud, when someone enters. The joke is that we immediately adjust (increase) the number, before the guest or late student gets into hearing range:
The class counts out loud with me … “16 … 17 … 18 … 1,119 … 1,120 … 1,121 … 1,122 …”
The naive bystander thinks that we have actually just completely over one thousand, one-hundred punches, and are continuing. The late-to-class student chuckles, immediately realizing the standard joke that we are playing.
Anyway, this small tease started me thinking: it’s human nature for us to want others to believe that we are working hard. So much so, that we inflate the number for a quick, practical joke.
So, I decided to execute my boring repetitions with someone else in the room. I perform arm-extended, medicine-ball rolls, while my wife is nearby, reading on the couch.
When I practice, I sometimes eye jab 300+ times, in a row.
Why?
Because my daughter sits doing her homework just a few feet from where I am standing. As I quietly count, I know that she would tire long before 100 jabs; she realizes this, too.
As the number of eye jabs increases, I can see out of the corner of my eye that she is a little impressed. I continue jabbing.
There’s no need to fake by counting high number for humor’s sake. These are real repetitions with passive witnesses doing their own thing nearby.
Having someone in earshot pushes me to a higher level. It’s an interesting form of motivation.
I am showing off.
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