Complete Self Protection By Al Peasland

WHITE BELT MENTALITY

As with a lot of my articles lately, inspiration for this week’s article has been delivered in bucket loads from my regular Tuesday night session with the amazing Terry Barnett and the talented guys at his exclusive class.

It seems I never fail to come away, not only with some new technique and skill but also a bigger “lesson” that I muse over on the hour and a half drive home.

This week’s class yet again took me out of my comfort zone of hitting bags, punching, kicking, grappling and sparring and again saw me back at the bottom of the class as a white belt surrounded by Dan grades.

I rolled out my regular and familiar joke of “Go easy – it’s my first lesson”, and whilst it actually wasn’t my first lesson in this particular discipline, the relative level of the others around me certainly brings back all of those daunting feelings of being a novice that I’ve become accustomed to over the last 25 years of training.

I speak a lot, as does my mentor Geoff, about the importance of always being in a class where you are at the bottom. Once you get to the top of any class, that should be your queue to go out and seek another new class where you are firmly back at the bottom again, otherwise, how will you grow?

We develop when we are under pressure, and we grow when we are surrounded by faster, stronger, more talented, more skilled, and more experienced influence.
Terry’s class is certainly no exception.

This week, my metaphorical belt felt so white it could have been used in a Daz advert, and the lesson, whilst one of my most enjoyable, was truly a “lesson” on many fronts.

To have a “White Belt Mentality”, to me, means to always be prepared to learn from whatever and wherever the source. To never be too proud or too “qualified” to take advice from any direction and level.
It also means to me, to always be prepared to leave the ego at home and take ourselves off to places where we will clearly be the beginner again. This is perhaps both the most difficult task and also the biggest lesson.

It’s ego that will dive in when you expose the tiniest chinks of weakness, from being too proud to listen to advice to feeling low because you’re not displaying the 5th Dan skill level that you have from another art.
For me, this is something, I’m glad to say, does not register anymore, but it’s certainly something I understand and still respect for the power that ego can have if you let it.
If ego had its way, I’d still be hitting punch bags and doing Animal Days instead of venturing into totally alien environments and arts where I know I will become the white belt again.
My ego would have held me back and stifled my own growth, as it will everyone’s who does not recognise it and control it.

Another lesson with becoming a white belt is that feeling of total frustration when you simply aren’t picking up the technique and can’t perform it at the level you desperately want to.
Frustration that your level in other arts is no longer visible or apparent to those around you when you’re back to basics in this new arena.
Patience is a virtue and without it, a white belt session can be very very frustrating.

This is perhaps the best lesson of all. Learning to deal with this frustration and not let it become your master is perhaps bigger than the new techniques that you’re learning.

I liken the effects of this impatience to a bicycle pump. Bear with me on this one – ha ha

When we use a bicycle pump, we have to work it slowly. If we become impatient and try to force too much air through too quickly, it simply jams. Nothing comes out or goes in.
Slow down and take it more steadily and the air flows freely.
Learning new technique and becoming a white belt again is very much like this.
Trying to progress too quickly, forcing too many new techniques in at once will simply create a jam, preventing anything from happening and blocking your growth.
Slowing down and taking things slowly is the order of the day, and is something I continually have to remind myself of.

Obviously, it goes without saying that also the patience of great training partners and the paced learning structure from a top instructor are a massive advantage to faster progression.

Transfer of Skills

The transfer of skills is quite an interesting aspect to becoming a white belt again.
We often move into other arts that compliment the ones we’ve already become accomplished in. However, even those arts which at first glance appear totally foreign to what you’ve already learned will often have skills and attributes that can be linked directly back to what you already know.
From physical skills such as footwork or body mechanics to more intangible skills such as your own learning processes and the ways you know are best for you to pick new techniques up quickly.

This transfer of skill can be a great asset to your faster progression in a new art.

However, one thing I have noticed is that, even these attributes which are second nature in your present art can be temporarily forgotten when you start to learn something new and I think it’s this that can cause the most frustration.
For example, take the footwork that I do without thinking in my Boxing and Karate sparring. I do this without a thought when I am in my comfort zone of those arts and ranges.
These should also be present when working on my Panantukan or Double stick, but for some reason, they suddenly abandon me when I am totally focused on learning the new techniques.
5th Dan’s become dancers with two left feet in an instant because we get so focused and intent on learning the new skill. And whilst this is totally natural and should be expected, it leads to frustration and disappointment which are again, all part of the learning process.

So, if you’ve made it this far you’re probably thinking, why would anyone want to be a white belt again with all these negatives to dampen the enjoyment.

Well, for me, these negatives are great lessons and lessons from which I know I will develop and grow.

There are also a great many positives to help balance the process out such as, being able to surround yourself with inspirational and talented individuals that will show you and guide you to the same dizzy heights.
Being able to find a totally new path that you know will also hold lots of great surprises along the way, just as the paths trodden before have done.

Being able to take these new found skills and introduce them back into the arts that you’ve already honed, in order to enhance and develop them even more.

The list goes on, but instead of me waffling further, I simply recommend you go out and try it for yourself.

And remember this, the more of a novice you feel and the whiter you can get your metaphorical white belt, the more room for growth and expansion there will be.

I will leave you with these quotes:-

If you actually learn to like being a beginner, the whole world opens up to you
Barbara Sher

A man ceases to be a beginner and becomes a master in any given science, when he has learned that he is always going to be a beginner.
Robin Collingwood

And always remember this.

In a beginners mind there are many possibilities, but in an Experts mind there are few.
Shunryu Suzuki

Thank you for reading

Stay Safe and Have Fun

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