Your First Year Of Study In The Martial Arts

Your first year in the martial arts is a time for massive gains when the focus of your training is aligned correctly.

As a new student in the dojo there are two areas of focus to both make those gains and position oneself for the future lessons to come.

The first area to focus on is capacity- increasing and expanding your capacity.

While the martial arts certainly have historical and spiritual aspects, they are primarily, as martial arts are, physical.

With most of that transmission being movement, working on being able to move better is goal number one.

Stretching routines, walking, and light exercise to increase your capacity of movement and range of motion.

Nothing extreme, start where you are and improve each day.

In our taijutsu training this can be expressed through our junan taiso exercises which strengthen the range of motion of the spine, hips, and legs.

Second to capacity are the fundamental movements, often called the kihon in the Japanese martial arts.

Every ‘art has a way of moving, and the DNA building blocks of that movement is captured through a series of fundamental movements. In our art this is the san shin no kata and the kihon happo.

Learning these movements, and focusing on gaining a proficiency in that is vital to being able to move in a taijutsu like manner, in addition to laying the foundation for future lessons.