Will my kid be a better person?

Is martial arts training going to definitely make your kid a better person?

I go outside sometimes. Big dogs chase me. Seemed appropriate for the topic.

You're going to have instructors who are great, grand, wonderful martial arts instructors. And sometimes, not so great.

If you just focus on a great technical school, they're going to learn sportsmanship. They're going to learn how to be challenged, how to rise to the occasion. And those are all important things. Then you're going to have other martial arts schools. Lot of accolades. You pay a lot of money. They take your money and give you some fancy colored belts. And that's great if that's your thing. But if the goal is to build better humans, that's not going to come from the martial arts school by itself. It's going to mean mom and dad have yet another job to do. The martial arts school is there to help you, but not do it for you.

I'm just going to be honest with you. Most school owners I think are decent people. But I'm not delusional. There are so many cases of bad behavior from martial arts school owners. Especially the real big ones. The big affiliate programs. A lot of stuff in the news lately. Not good. Brazilian jiu-jitsu stuff. But taekwondo has it too. Haven't heard anything with kendo. Smaller community. But hey, people are people. People be peopling.

You're the final arbiter of what's going to happen. You're going to help your son or daughter digest what's going on in the school, what their experience is. If you have it in your head that there are certain qualities you want them to get out of their martial arts experience, you have to be clear about that with yourself, with them, and probably with the martial arts instructor. If it's a good martial arts instructor, they're going to be able to really help you to that end.

One of the things would be falling in love with what I sometimes nickname the process. You perform some sort of a game or match against another person. You look at the results. Win, lose, draw, whatever. Figure out what worked. Figure out what didn't. What didn't work, correct it. Improve it. Then go out and do it again. That other match is really just a giant mirror telling you what you do well and don't do well. And falling in love with that process of self-exploration, because when you have that process, whatever field you're in, if you do that long enough, you can become quite the force.

And beyond that, being able to understand that your value as a human being is not tethered to the color cloth on your butt. What somebody else told you you are. Your last performance. If that kid starts seeing their value as a human being tethered to their ability to perform, that's a lot of pressure for a young person.

Let me tell you about an old student of mine named David. Before I did all this, I was a music teacher. Still am, technically. David was how I got that gig, and I hope he's watching this. He's a good guy. After high school, he had a degenerative joint disorder. He plays bass. He slapped the bass big time. Plays drum set too. He knew at some point his ability to stabilize his joints, where he can put pressure on a fretboard, was going to go away. He's in his mid-thirties. He can no longer play music.

He was teaching in a really great spot in Ashburn, Virginia, and he can't teach there anymore. He asked me to take over. It's kind of cool, right? A student asking me to teach his students.

What he's doing is taking some time, traveling, doing some thinking. Not what's his value, what's his worth. His whole family's musicians. His late father, dean of music at a local college. Crazy talented. Mother, master of music, teaches violin. Crazy talented sister, soprano vocalist. Crazy talented whole family. He's out of music now. At least not playing it. I've never seen him have a crisis about his own value. Only crisis I've seen him have is, where do I want to go next? And that's part crisis and part joy. Let's say he's 35. Season 35 of the Dave show, the writers are getting real weird with it. But he's a good sport about it. The reason why he's that way, I think, is because he learned early on that his value as a human being is not tethered to his ability to make noises with his hands.

And so, having your kid learn that their value is not their ability to crank somebody's neck or smack somebody with a stick. That's real confidence. And that leads to grit, because they can sustain the trials and tribulations of being alive and see their way through a thing and try to find out what's on the other side.

There's three reasons why I opened this place. There's three big fears that get people. The fear of getting beat up, the fear of your body failing you, and the fear of being disconnected from other people. I think martial arts is uniquely situated to cross economic boundaries, religious boundaries, gender. If the person running the place has got their head screwed on straight, they should be able to provide that kind of environment.

There's so many different lessons that can be learned in a martial arts school. They can be learned in anything you study with sincerity. David learned it in music class. But he also learned it in martial arts school. He did get his black belt. Korean martial arts.

Be really clear what makes a better human to you, mom and dad. There's a way that a martial arts school can help illuminate that quality. Maybe it's calm, peacefulness. Maybe it's aggression. Sometimes that's necessary too. Maybe it's the wisdom to know when to use which.

If we're just trying to churn out people that can choke really well, I don't know that we're doing a big plus to the rest of the community. But if we're turning out some people with some heart and a head and they care about what's going on around them, I think that does a lot. Better to be a warrior in a garden than a gardener in a war. There's some truth in that. Life's tough. Give our kids grit and vision, compassion, a process by which they don't give up on themselves, that life's not hopeless.

I'm not trying to say that martial arts is going to solve the world's problems. But put a dent in it.

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