Stop Asking Your Martial Arts Instructor Questions That Begin With "What If...?"
By Jeff Baines
5th Degree Black Belt in Kempo
2nd Degree Black Belt in Tae Kwon Do
Level 4 Apprentice Instructor in Jeet Kune Do
Owner of Dojo Source
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Please stop asking your Martial Arts Instructor questions that begin with “What if…?” If you have been training with an Instructor for years and years, and have built a relationship of respect and trust with your instructor, it might be safe for you to ask your Instructor your burning “What If…?” question. But if you really want to see your new instructor get really mad, possibly earning you lots of push ups or running laps, feel free to ask every instructor’s favorite question: “What if there is more than one opponent?”. When your instructor is in a good mood, you might get lucky and only receive a snarky “You can’t even beat one opponent, what makes you think you could beat two?” Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that your instructor doesn’t think about your “What if…?” question or worry about you learning this. The problem happens when your instructor tries to teach you a move and you are practicing it for 5 minutes and before you completely understand how to use the move in the scenario that your instructor has shown you, you start to worry about how to change the move for other scenarios. If you had practiced the move for a while (at least one full lesson), and mastered the move in the scenario that the Instructor posed, and THEN asked your “What if…?” question, your instructor would be happy to explore scenarios where that move changes. Usually if you don’t say anything, your instructor will start to visit other scenarios with you all on their own.
Asking “What if…?” questions after just learning a move shows impatience and a lack of trust. If you can trust that your instructor will eventually go over variations on moves that they show you, that trust will usually be rewarded because they will show you the variations after you have mastered the first variation they showed you. Many skills of the first variation often apply to the other variations, so if you are patient and just practice the move you were shown until it starts to feel smooth, your instructor will begin to see that you are ready for the other variations. The question you should ask yourself before you ask a “What if..,?” question, is “What if I was put in the scenario my instructor posed, could I do the move he showed using proper form and with an opponent who is resisting?” If you ask yourself this question and the answer is “Yes”, then go ahead and ask your “What If…?” Question, but if the answer is “No”, then I recommend you practice a bit more before you pester your instructor with your question. You should be so smooth with your technique that you are past the Remember and Understand phase of that technique in Bloom’s Taxonomy (to learn more about Bloom’s Taxonomy and the teaching methods of Dojo Source, check out Martial Arts and the Best Ways To Learn & Remember). If you are at least in the Apply phase of Bloom’s Taxonomy then you are free to ask your instructor the question, but while you are still trying to remember and understand the move just keep practicing and working on it the way you were shown.
So Dojo Source offers something for everyone, even if you have trained Martial Arts already, we can increase your skills in the Fighting Ranges where you have less experience. If you want to try a free class, sign up by going here: www.dojosource.fit/free-trial.
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