There are times when you turn up at a training session and nothing goes right. Your mind knows what you want to do but your body doesn’t do it. You may lose sparring bouts and kick yourself because you know where you went wrong and know it could have been avoided. All in all you think it was a bad training session and you may walk out downhearted. Be reassured that this happens to all of us! We all have off days of course whether through tiredness or injury, but sometimes I think your body is readjusting itself as well. We have to train our bodies to move in a certain way that may not be natural and to do that we have to break down old habits and rebuild with the new ones. It takes time and the body sometimes needs to get worse before it gets better!
You may think your ability goes up and down with each session but as long as you keep applying yourself the trend will always be up. You only need to look at the novices to remember what you were like when you started and how far you’ve come! In my experience the training session that follows immediately after a really bad one is one of the better ones when everything goes right. I think this is partly because of the body readjusting as mentioned earlier, and partly because the bad session has focused your mind. During the days since the ‘bad’ one you’ve thought a lot about what you can improve and you enter the Dojo with renewed hunger. This sharpening of the mind and body is really useful and a reminder that we have to continually work hard to get better. Therefore In a lot of ways you’ve learned more from that session than a good one!
Finally the fact the you were there training and not finding an excuse not to is a success in itself!
