There’s a big difference between just training or practicing something and deep focused practice.
Putting in hours on the mat throwing kicks and punches is one thing, but deep practice is about how you engage with every repetition, how you pay attention to details and push your limits to improve.
If you’ve ever felt like you’re stuck in your training without improvement, it could be because your training has been on autopilot.
How do you get unstuck?
Through Deep Practice.
1. The Edge of Your Ability: Growth Through Struggle
The main idea of deep practice for martial arts training is to be pushing your boundaries and working at the very edge of your current abilities as a martial artist. This means venturing into an area of training that feels uncomfortable, where mistakes are frequent and commonplace.
It’s easy for us to stay in an area where we know we’re proficient, and never push ourselves beyond things that are undemanding.
A mental image my Sensei gave me during training was to view your training as a rubber band. He suggested that to never stretch the band is to never push your growth as a martial artist. So in order to grow, you will need to stretch the band a little by little. If you stretch the band too quickly it will snap and your progress will regress.
This is true of Deep Practice as well. The demands are much higher in training.
In his book, “The Talent Code”, Daniel Coyle talks about “Staring at the Gap”. It’s the gap of where your current abilities reside and where you want to be. This gap is where your growth will occur.
For instance in my own training of Kenpo Karate, I spend a lot of time studying some of the more complex concepts and principles in the techniques. Some of these principles I’ve been taught to practice as separate drills at first in order to isolate specific principles and internalize the movements.
Alongside these drills, I’ve tried to learn the sequence of the technique until I’ve achieved some flow and speed. However, where my challenge lies and where many mistakes happen is when I try to apply some of these more advanced concepts and principles at speed within a technique.
Sometimes these mistakes feel discouraging, and it’s easy to become frustrated.
Looking back six months, a year, three years… I realize that the time period where every training session and every technique felt like a challenge – is where my growth happened the most. That time was where the rubber band was being stretched the most.
The brain was learning and rewiring itself in response to it. And the more I embraced this struggle, the faster and stronger the neural circuits became.
As my Sensei once told me, “True strength and growth do not come from taking the easy road; they are forged through continuous effort and the courage to face your challenges.”
So from the perspective of neuroscience, challenges are what activates the brain’s plasticity, which in turn creates the conditions for learning martial arts faster. Practicing at or just past you’re your comfort zone fires the neural pathways, which builds and strengthens the myelin sheath around them. (Myelin acts like insulation for electrical wires, speeding up signals between your brain and muscles.)
The more you do deep practice, the more insulation it will create, making your skills become better and more automatic over time.
2. Breaking Skills into Chunks: Small Parts, Big Impact
When learning a Kenpo Karate technique, it’s easy to get caught up in learning a new self-defense sequence as a whole.
Deep practice, though, tells us that this is not the effective means to practice for skill development. It is simply better to break that technique into smaller chunks in order to focus on the detailed specifics of a technique. Perhaps the entry into the technique, which in many cases is a block or a deflection in Kenpo.
Focusing on things like:
- Controlling the critical distance between you and your opponent and controlling centerline
- Understanding of your conceptual box
- Seeking depth (the movement to the front or the rear in a technique)
- Generating power into the block through rotation of the body (width)
- Settling your weight for proper weight transfer (height) and fusion
- Canceling the opponents height / width / depth zones
All of this is just in the first move of a technique.
Thinking of all these things is daunting for a beginner, however, you can take for instance one idea from the list and work on it, for instance working on just the timing and the proper distance. Then look at how your block relates to your conceptual box, then add torque for power etc.
Then move on to the next piece of the technique.
And make no mistake, this way of training isn’t just for beginners. It’s for anyone who’s looking at sharpening their tools and level up.
Creating strong and precise neural connections comes from isolating these individual principles / concepts in chunks. Then combine them.
You will find that everything will feel more natural and consequently flow better with more power and speed.
3. Slow it Down: Precision Over Speed
Some years ago, I heard Sifu Dan Inosanto, a legendary instructor who was a student of the likes of Bruce Lee, GM Ed Parker, Ark Yuey Wong and countless Filipino martial arts instructors, say:
“Don’t hide your inadequacies with speed.”
It’s a great lesson.
I took this to mean practicing movements slowly and deliberately. In martial arts, Kenpo in particular, we get enamored with speed. I’m not going to lie, the flashy hands in Kenpo is what first drew me to the art.
BUT, in order to get faster, it is recommended that we first slow down.
When I was first learning the techniques, I would constantly try to speed up. Partly because I thought it was supposed to be done as fast as possible, and also because I didn’t understand most of the principles that was required to make the technique go from passable to good (and beyond).
By practicing slowly, you engage your brain more thoroughly, allowing you to notice little details that you definitely miss when ripping through a technique at a rapid pace. It will also help you reduce (and hopefully) eliminate bad habits while building more precision in your technique.
It should be noted that those who have studied elite athletes and musicians often speak of how they practice at reduced speeds to practice their discipline.
So practice slowly until you’ve ironed out the kinks and understand your movement. Only then begin to speed up.
4. Embrace Mistakes: They’re Your Best Teacher
Mistakes can be discouraging. Especially when you keep doing the same mistakes over and over.
And it can quickly put you in a downward performance spiral and think of yourself as FAILING.
Years ago I was at a Tony Robbins seminar, you know – the tall motivational speaker with big teeth, and he helped me reframe this thought process. He said:
“There are no such thing as failure, there are only outcomes.”
(check out this video by Tony Robbins on Tik Tok)
This is especially true with deep practice.
While learning Jeet Kune Do years ago, I recall practicing a very specific strategy on interception against a taller training partner with a much longer reach. My angle and timing was off, which made this particular technique challenging, and left me open to getting struck (even though the intent was to hit him). I tried to speed things up to compensate for the increased distance, and it wasn’t working and I was getting frustrated.
Finally, I asked my partner to punch very slowly. After failing multiple times I finally realized that my position arm position and angle of my counter attack was off, which caused me to get hit by him. Adjusting the technique felt awkward at first, but after dozens of slow repetitions, it finally made sense.
This really hit the idea of what Tony Robbins taught me to ring true. And that these mistakes weren’t failures, it was data that helped me observe and fine tune my motion.
Hence, every mistake you make is a learning opportunity.
The feedback loop of trial and error, then corrections, is where mastery of your techniques will take shape. Peter Hollins in his book “The Science of Rapid Skill Acquisition” mentions that if you’re not making mistakes, then you’re probably not pushing yourself hard enough.
And this is especially true while learning an art that deals with fine motor skills like Kenpo or Japanese jujutsu.
When I was training in Jujutsu with my Sensei, there were usually very little verbal instruction. I’d make a mistake, he would correct me… through pain. I’d try again, more often than not making a mistake. Then Sensei would demonstrate and make a minor correction. Then I’d do the technique again. And he’d do this for the entire session… often on just one technique. It was a frustrating way to learn. But this struggle to learn is what made the techniques stick.
Daniel Coyle talks about how this type of struggle is essential for skill development. He explains that it is when your brain is working the hardest that your myelin sheaths around your nerves will develop and make your skill faster and more automatic.
5. Chunking and Feedback: The Foundation of Mastery
Deep practice isn’t just about endless repetition of techniques. It’s about mindful and purposeful practice. Every time you work on the selected sequence, it needs to be informed by either self-assessment or through proper guidance by your teacher.
Each repetition should be done mindfully and then reflected on.
What worked well? What adjustments can you make to make it better next time? This self-evaluation is of what worked and didn’t is extremely important.
One of the essential drills for expressing Kenpo Karate at our dojo is what we’ve come to call master key timing and power development drills. These drills translate directly and indirectly into many of our techniques as it is often a “chunk” of a technique.
This creates a basic movement pattern, acting as a feedback loop to accelerate your skills. By focusing on short repeatable sequences that can be improved upon you can make big improvements in your technique.
The Journey to Mastery
While I’m far from having mastered anything, I consistently use the idea of deep practice in my own training. It’s not simple, and it can be tedious work, often humbling and uncomfortable. But honestly, this is exactly why it works so well.
Being able to focus and be very deliberate about what and how I practice, and struggling through mistakes, has elevated my own skills by a large margin.
And honestly it doesn’t matter what level you are when you begin to look at your own practice this way. You could be a complete beginner or a black belt, deep practice can help you in your journey to mastery.
What’s your experience with deep practice? Share your thoughts in the comments below or explore more on Martial Musings.