Richard Matthews: [00:00:00] have this concept that I like to tell people or teach people about. And it’s the the art of potential, right? And we have our known limits, right? What we actually know is 1 box that we all live in, right? Those, we can see the edges of that box because we’re inside of it.
Right? And like, the biggest example of that is like, the, you know, the 4 minute mile, everyone knew before the 1960s that you couldn’t run faster than a 4 minute mile. But. Outside of that box is what, where the actual human potential really is. It’s like our known potential and then our real potential and our real potential is some other box that we can’t see the edges of.
And one of the things that’s been really fascinating to watch over the last 20 years is we are seeing in every category of, you know, human experience that we are pushing the edges of what we know our capabilities are. And we’re exploring and expanding our potential. And so, you know, now.
If you don’t run a four minute mile, you’re not even competitive, right? And so we’re seeing that happen in just like every sort of category. And so bringing it back to martial arts, you’re seeing a lot of those same things. Like how does what we’re learning about nutrition. [00:01:00] impact what we’re capable of doing in and outside of the dojang with martial arts?
What about what we’re learning about stretching and muscle development and how it’s built and how the brain actually builds you know, pathways for repeating motion? Like, you know, some of those things, like we actually understand them now and have the science behind it where we didn’t before. And so we’re able to push the edges of what our actual potential is capable of.
And so You know that’s where, like, because we’re in this really advanced stage of being able to innovate, it’s really important to keep, okay, those traditions as well. Right? And that’s where it’s like, we could really blind ourselves to the traditions of what we already know, if you’re not careful about it.
And so anyways, that’s where. One of the things I’ve been really enjoying about your class and your teaching style here at Fair Academy is that you do teach both of those things, but you have, like, there’s no fear of the innovation and there’s no fear of the tradition.
You can use both of those things and really create a holistic person, right? And unlimited you.
[00:02:00]
Master Victor: welcome back everybody to another episode of the unlimited you today. We’re going to be talking about the journey of mastery going from novice to an expert specifically in martial arts and what that looks like, what that entails, how long it takes and you know, everything you want to know about the journey.
And if we don’t cover anything, you can always leave a comment, send us an email, get more information on it. Today we have Richard Matthews again with us today [00:03:00] to talk about all our little training goodies.
Richard Matthews: Hello,
welcome, thanks for having me back on the show.
Master Victor: Yeah, go ahead. I, the internet was going a little slow that I couldn’t hear you.
Richard Matthews: I said thanks for having me back on the show. Yeah.
Master Victor: Absolutely. It’s a pleasure. Today, I guess we can start off with, you know, defining mastery. What is mastery? So you’ll hear a lot of you know, people Speaking about, Oh, I’ve mastered this specific technique, or I’ve mastered this art and a lot of people, at least from my perspective, don’t understand what the word mastery really means.
And, you know, sometimes people will get to an advanced or intermediate stage and they think they’ve mastered something. Now, mastery to me requires years for you to truly master something. And not only understanding where it came from, the technique involved in whatever you’re trying to master, but I would also say that mastery entails doing something without [00:04:00] requiring all that initial thought required in doing it at the novice stage.
So you know, for martial arts, for example, we do a lot of kicks, especially in Taekwondo. Right. Once you get to the level where you can do your kick without having to, you know, think about bringing your knee up and snapping it, you can do it in your sleep and do it perfectly at speed with perfect precision or near perfect precision.
That is, I think the closest we can get to mastery. If that makes sense. What do you think about that?
Richard Matthews: I think that it makes a lot of sense, and I know that like the journey for mastery, like I, I am definitely still in, I don’t know where you would consider it, but I still consider myself pretty novice on the on the Taiwan. But there’s several other skills that I have mastered. And you go through that process of you know, in our family, we call it the great suck a tude right where you just aren’t good at it.
And you have to go through that where you have easy skills that you just have to learn how to do, and you have to just. What would the word you have to like slog through and just sort of learn how to do the things and teach [00:05:00] the brain, the aspects that you need to know and you move forward with each of those things until you eventually get to the point where it just becomes easy.
And then once it becomes easy, you can continue to refine it and then it becomes something you don’t even have to think about. And once you get to that point then you can that’s where you’ve like, you’ve achieved the mastery where it’s just second nature to do those things and to do them correctly.
I’m going to ask Steve to talk about what
Master Victor: absolutely. Where, especially that second nature aspect of it, where you’re not really having to think about it now in Taekwondo. I try to break up the novice intermediate and advanced agent to belt levels. So the novice stage is essentially white belt to even green belt. There’s some green belts that will kind of start to play a little bit with that intermediate stage.
And then intermediate is really from about green belt to, you can even say red belt. Once you attain red belt, it’s red for a reason. It represents danger. So somebody who gets to red belt, they know enough that they can seriously hurt somebody, and they’re getting into [00:06:00] the real advanced techniques of Taekwondo.
After red belt consider that advanced techniques. You’re learning more difficult kicks, more difficult movement, and, you know, once you get your black belt, In Taekwondo specifically, we consider you a trained student. So you haven’t mastered anything, you know, I don’t care how good you are. You haven’t really mastered anything.
And after that black belt takes about, let’s say four to six years, depending on, you know, how you’re training, how often you’re training four to six years to attain that black belt. For you to get from first degree to fourth degree, it takes five to seven years, depending on how quickly you’re moving. It takes about two years between each degree for the first and two, and then from three to four.
It takes about three, two to three years in between each one of those and that takes some time and really refining the basics of what you started as a colored belt and. We can go a little bit more into the details of each [00:07:00] one of those stages. But I remember, you know, when we first started the training together, you were like, I’m in this for the long run, you know, I know it’s going to take a while.
And that’s kind of the mentality that it really takes to get good at martial arts is knowing that it’s going to take you a long time to really understand the complexities of it and to let those complexities, you know, essentially be based down into. Basicness eventually, you know, it becomes, everything becomes basic.
It just becomes what you do. And I would agree you’re still at that novice stage, but you are, I would say at the more advanced development of the novice stage, you’re getting ready to transition into the intermediate techniques, you know, how has that journey been so far for you, you know, through that novice stage and learning the basic techniques and the basic movements that we’ve gone over.
Richard Matthews: So it’s really interesting for me because, you know, at my stage in life, I’ve got a Aspects of my life that I’ve been through the [00:08:00] mastery journey before, right? And so like you have this mastery timeline and for like from novice to expert in martial arts and what I’ve sort of realized over the course of my life is that mastery sort of looks the same in a lot of different categories, and once you’ve done it, you sort of know the process.
And so I see the same sort of timeline. And you know, like one of the things I do is a lot of persuasive writing and persuading, you know, like copywriting and stuff for businesses. And. You know, the first couple of years you’re doing that, it was, I was terrible at it, you never got any results, and you get to the point now where it’s just easy, and like, all my communication generally comes out at, you know, it, at a base level is pretty persuasive, because I’ve been doing it for 20 years, and I know it’s the same kind of thing with the martial arts, that when I first started doing it, I was like, this is really hard and it’s hard to get your hands to do the things that you need them to do, it’s hard to remember, like, like, Every little motion that we do has all sorts of like tiny minute things like the positioning of your feet and which part of your hand is is flexed and which one isn’t.
Like one of the things you taught us was the you know, you flex the the three fingers, right? Your first [00:09:00] two and your thumb knuckle, and then you relax last two. That took forever for me to like just be able to remember to do that. And now it’s getting to the point where like every time I make a fist, it just defaults into that position.
And the thing that I’ve recognized is that anything that’s worth mastering is worth putting at least ten of your, ten years of your life into. And so I know that was a discussion that we had at the very beginning. It’s like, hey, if I’m gonna train with you, I want to know that, like, you’re here for the long haul, and I want you to know that I’m here for the long haul, right?
I want to actually put in the time and the effort to be a master of this, because I want to master my body, and master my fitness, and master those kind of things. And knowing that I’m gonna have to go back to the part that is hard, right? And I find it useful as for me, like, as a parent to show my kids that I’m willing to go back into that novice stage to learn new things right?
Because they’re doing that all the time now, right? They’re doing it with, like, learning to read and learning to write and learning to do the dishes and learning to do all sorts of different things. And it’s hard and you see them struggle with it. So I like that aspect of it too, where I’m able [00:10:00] to show them me struggling with new skills and going through that novice stage.
Cause if you want to learn anything, you have to go through that novice intermediate expert master stage. That timeline always sort of fits no matter what skill you’re working on picking up.
Master Victor: And depending on the skill that you’re learning and that could, you know, be a few months, it could be a few years for martial arts is definitely a few years. And in that novice stage, we’re really learning some of the basic techniques that later on we’re going to essentially be building on top of.
And this is one of the biggest things I stress is when you’re learning the basics. You want to spend a lot of time and the basics is often time underrated because people want to get to the flashy kicks. They want to get to all this cool looking stuff, but we’re really comes in handy, especially in a self defense scenario is those basic techniques that we’re learning, for example, your front kick, learning to bring the knee up, snap and put it down really fast, right?
Learning to do that well, you know, keeps people [00:11:00] from grabbing your leg and then you apply that to your roundhouse kick, your sidekick and all these different kicks that you’re going to learn, but it requires at that novice stage, you know, doing these techniques slow. So you do them correctly and doing these easier techniques that doesn’t require as much, I guess, control or awareness over your body to get that control and awareness.
Whereas when we get to the intermediate stage, which you guys have kind of started to experience, you know, we’re working a little bit more on, on speed and confusing your brain and getting it to work at a different, I guess, level or pace then, you know, that technique refinement, working on using that technique at a higher pace that can then be more effective in a self defense situation where, you know, at the novice stage we’re doing, we’re breaking things down.
Really easy. You know, we’re getting now more complicated. We’re putting different techniques together. We’re adding more stepping drills. And at first, just like in that novice stage, it’s very [00:12:00] confusing. You start doing these things, you’re like,
Richard Matthews: So,
Master Victor: you have to accept that you’re going to suck at first at it.
That’s like, I think one of the hardest things for people is that they come to martial arts, expect them to be like the best person ever. And it’s hard. It’s really hard. And you know, it feels goofy. It feels weird. You’re putting your body and all these different situations, right. And it’s learning to become comfortable with the uncomfortable.
And then eventually that becomes natural. And you know, that’s kind of where we’re at right now, where your training is, we’re taking these slower techniques, we’re making them faster, we’re adding more complexity to them, and we’re transitioning from that, you know, novice stage, which takes about, depends on the training, a year or two, depending on, you know, how often you’re training, you guys are moving pretty fast, where we’re getting to, you know, The more complex development, you know, we’re learning how to control different parts of your body.
And you mentioned, you know, focusing on the three. The three fingers that you’re [00:13:00] squeezing for your punch, you know, now we’re going to be even refining that where we’re delaying the twist of your punch. We’re learning to turn the hips more and developing more power in our strikes. And we’re getting into the more complex areas of that technique refinement.
And like you’re saying with almost any other art or any other technique that you’re learning, years, right? Especially this intermediate portion can be one of the, I guess, most extended areas of study for a lot of people though. You’ll spend a lot of time between green belt and red belt, and that’s because you’re learning a lot of the techniques that are really difficult.
And once you get a good grasp on them, then we get to the advanced stage. And for a lot of people, the advanced stage is a lot more fun because you’re throwing more flashy kicks, you’re doing things at a higher level. And what I consider advanced is taking. An intermediate move and making it more complex.
So for example, we have [00:14:00] what’s called the hook kick. You basically bring your leg up, hook it around, and that can be a headshot where we take that move and now we’re adding a jump spin to a jump spinning hook kick or a butterfly hook kick. So we’re making an intermediate move more complex. And that complexity allows you to use it in different situations, right?
You’re then also working on refining the basic move at an intermediate level. So where, you know, you’re working on your front and your roundhouse kick and your sidekick, you’re also doing that at the advanced level. Because if you don’t work on those basic kicks, that’ll start to wash off. So you’ll notice, especially recently our warmup.
Is the basic kicks. So we’ll do front ax and round kick as a warmup where that used to be our workout. And then we get into the, you know, the heavier stuff where you guys have developed the endurance to last that training.
Richard Matthews: Yeah, absolutely.[00:15:00] And I find it interesting to the as you progress and you get to the more advanced techniques, it feels like, and it’s, I see this in a lot of different skills to you, have to learn the rules, like the basic rules, right? I have to learn how to throw a punch before I can start.
refining it I have to learn how to make that basic movement to and then you can start adding things like, okay, then you focus on how you’re flexing your fist or how you’re twisting your arm or how you’re moving your hips with it. But like, you have to learn the basic movement first before you can start stacking other skills onto it.
And like, you know, I’ve been doing photography for 20 years, the same thing I always tell people, you have to learn the rules first before you can learn to break them. Like, you want to have straight horizons, you want to follow the rule of thirds. Once you’ve learned how to follow those rules, then you can learn how to creatively break them, or to make them more advanced, as you, the way that you talked about it in in martial arts, is you’re going to add more things to them, more complexity, but you can’t add the complexity until you understand the basics, like, and you have to understand the basics really well so that you know how to do the more advanced things.
Master Victor: Exactly. And that sturdy foundation, [00:16:00] you know, just like in any art allows you to. You know, develop a style, essentially, like you’re learning, you know, how to do a front kick. Maybe you want to do it faster. Maybe you turn a little bit and those differences in how everybody does it becomes essentially your style at an intermediate level at an advanced level.
People start to set into a unique style of doing things, right? You start to see how different people. Perform each technique and then you start, Oh, that looks cool. Let me add, let me try it and add it a little bit into mine. So not only are we refining and learning different techniques, but we’re also kind of embedding ourselves into a school of style and you know, that’s a good thing at first, once you get to mastery, we want to let go of style completely, but that’s going to be a later development.
And I initially think that developing a style is a good thing. Although it can be restricting once you get to a higher [00:17:00] level. And this kind of touches into the aspect of flow state, right? So, in any situation we want to be extremely dynamic in how we perform and go about that situation. And if you’re stuck in a style, like if I’m constantly in my fighting stance this way, and maybe someone gets close and I need to switch to a Muay Thai fighting stance, it’s a whole different style.
Richard Matthews: Yeah.
Master Victor: going to be able to do that if I’m so caught up in my Taekwondo style. You know, I’m going to have, someone’s going to find holes, they’re going to see my timing. And we want to be dynamic in our usage of martial arts by entering what a lot of people call the flow state. And we do that through refining the technique to a point where you don’t have to think about it, right?
You surrender to the subconscious. And when you do that. You cut down on the processing speed of thought, right? So we’re immediately taking in information and without thinking it, it’s done, right? We’re taking away that processing speed that’s [00:18:00] limited by our brain. And that allows us to really transcend technique, really transcend strength levels and refinement of reflexes and instinct, right?
So we’re completely relying on instinct here and that takes a lot of training. That’s why I say it was one of the last developments in the advanced stage is once you have really practiced your hard techniques, once you’ve done the refinement and you’ve developed some sense of style. Is getting to unlock that flow state in almost any manner, you know, and I’m sure you’ve experienced this maybe while, you know, on a call or doing other things in your life.
You get in this zone where everything just kind of channels into it.
Richard Matthews: I have that in in writing, right? I’ve been doing writing for so long that and I, to your point, mastered several different styles of writing from persuasive writing to educational writing to several different pieces, like styles of writing now that they just come really easily. And it’s the kind of thing that like, once, you’ve [00:19:00] gotten to the point where you’ve mastered it, you can sit down and when you get to that flow state, you can just write.
And, you know, I can write 2500 5000 7000 words in an evening and have really good content that is, it’s like almost ready to publish. Just needs a little bit of, you know, maybe a minor bit of editing at the end, right? Cause you’ve just got, it’s something you’ve been doing for so long that it’s instinctual, right? So if I want to sit down and write a blog post, or I want to write a newsletter, or I want to write a copywriting piece, or I want to write anything, I can just sit down and do that because I’ve been through that, you know, 20 year mastery timeline journey from, you know, novice to expert and mastered several different styles.
And I can jump into and out of different styles for whatever I need. And creative storytelling and whatnot. And I know that like, I see the same process happening in our martial arts stuff in a couple of different ways. So one, I see it on my side. Like where I’m at and you know, I can tell that I’m novice and I’m still working on those real basic movements, but you also demonstrate everything for us.
And every time I see you demonstrate for us, I’m like, man, it’s just [00:20:00] so simple for you that sometimes I even have to like, ask you, be like, okay, you did something there and you didn’t mention what it was you did. You mentioned like 4 or 5 things, but I also saw you do something with your foot and you look down and be like, oh, yeah, you’re right.
I’m also doing this other thing because it’s, it’s so easy for you and you’ve been doing it so long that. It’s not every single tiny little aspect of what you’re doing is forefront until Someone who’s watching you do it and trying to replicate it is going, okay I saw you do all like 90 percent of the things you explained in this one thing.
You didn’t explain What was that right and that mastery coming in where it’s just so natural For you to do those things and particularly with like your foot movements and your breathing that Like, I still have to, like, think about how I’m placing my feet on the ground, and how I’m breathing with every movement.
I know, like, in class yesterday, I was talking, like, every time I do this, I find myself really tensing up my abs, and then not being able to breathe. And you’re like, oh, yep, that’s it. Here’s how you can help fix that, right? And I don’t know, like, I can just see that, see the difference from someone who’s a novice and [00:21:00] working with someone who’s a master.
Master Victor: Yeah, and that’s kind of something that a lot of people in the advanced stage will get confused about. They’ll get to this point where, you know, they feel all that comfort in those areas. Like, they know where to put their feet, they know how to move, they feel like they got a good kick. Maybe they can beat everybody in their school in sparring or forms, right?
But the world is a lot bigger than the people we experience in our school. And the skill level is very big. Once you get to that advanced level, it is.
And this is where the lifelong development of martial arts is key, right? And once you get to a certain level, there’s endless refinement. And a lot of people don’t see that where, you know, you can always make your kick faster.
You can make it move in a straighter line. You can snap and turn your body more to develop or deliver more power in a strike, right? And when. Someone gets to, let’s say a first degree black belt stage. And they know all these pretty kicks. They, you know, they’re pretty confident [00:22:00] in sparring. When they get exposed to someone who’s significantly better than them.
They’re like, Oh, I didn’t know that was that much more to learn until that person just showed me. And then they see the difference in. where they can get to. And this is where it really comes in handy to have somebody who has either attained that level of skill or someone who can show you that, Hey, you’re still not at that full mastery level.
You, you’ve only just dipped your toe in the pool of skill that’s required to get yourself to that point. And in any martial arts. There’s an endless training your whole life, and it’s a way of living where, you know, you, you get to a certain place, you learn that skill, and then you’re constantly refining.
You’re not only going back and refining the basics, you’re working on your mental aspect, your emotional control. You’re working on your own self awareness. You’re learning new skills. [00:23:00] You’re working on your speed, your accuracy, your reflex, and it’s this constant refinement tunnel that brings you to a sharp point.
And you’re constantly sharpening that point to be finer, and finer. And the sharper the point, The more effective it is doing these specific skills. A lot of people they’ll get to that really good point where a lot of martial artists get, there’s a lot of black belts out there, especially in Taekwondo.
With nowadays, a lot of schools would just hand out a belt. And I think I must’ve talked about this a little bit where. Some schools will hold testings just as a way to make money. They’ll, you know, hold a test. They’ll, they have each student break a border or two, they put a belt around their waist and they make, you know, 50, 60, a hundred bucks per test, per student.
And it’s just a way to bring an income where, you know, the old school philosophy and through the school that, you know, I studied under and the schools that I’ve ran, [00:24:00] you know, we make. People earn their belts. You have got to show us that you’re earning that bell even before we decide to test you.
So in class, every single day, I’m watching everybody. I’m seeing how they’re progressing. I’m saying, Oh no, he’s maybe got. You know, work on this roundhouse kick a little bit more and then they’ll be ready for the yellow belt or their sidekick needs to be refined a little bit more, and then there’ll be ready for that orange belt.
But until I see a student demonstrate that level of skill in class, they are not ready to get to that belt. And I essentially see belt tests as just a ceremony in, you know, commemorating the achievement that you’ve already worked hard enough to get there. I don’t see it as like a. Oh, you know, you have to show us here that you’ve earned it.
To me, the test is just a kind of a ceremony that you get to show all of your friends and family, all the stuff that you’ve been learning and know how to do, and that’s a big ideological [00:25:00] difference in what we call Mcdojangs versus a real Taekwondo school or karate school or anything like that is, you know, are they testing you?
Properly. Are they making you earn your belt? And if they’re not, I’d highly recommend you leave that school and go find another one. And that’s the biggest thing is how fast are people moving through belts? Cause nobody should be moving through belts really crazy fast. You know, do they have 20 belts?
In their curriculum, right? Do they have like, four different yellow belts, four different green belts that like one with a stripe in it and all this stuff. And that’s not the traditional way of thinking. I don’t think it’s the best way to go about it. Like here, the way we do it, we use the traditional belt system.
It goes. White, yellow, orange, green, blue, purple, red, brown,
Richard Matthews: then it will
Master Victor: recommended black belt, and then black belt where the recommended black belt, you’re essentially getting ready for your black belt and then you get your black belt. And then we start to degrees. There [00:26:00] are nine degrees total. Now there is a honorary 10th degree that you can only get after you’re dead.
And once you retain fourth degree, you’re considered a master. Once you attain seventh degree, we don’t wanna get the 10th degree
Once you get to a seventh degree you’re considered a grand. And once you get to ninth degree, you’re the highest grand
Richard Matthews: by
Master Victor: to a grand master level. It takes a lot of lifelong learning and continuous development when you get to fourth degree in TaeKwonDo. We consider that essentially the end of you learning the moves and the basic skills, it then gets into teaching through teaching.
You learn more, you learn deeper about each skill. You start having to break down how you’re doing each technique to then show other people, and that allows you to see the moves differently. [00:27:00] So usually we have anybody who’s in black belt. At a full on school, having to start assist teaching class because it really does help in the development of that person, but the belts should just be essentially I think we talked about this, just you done that belt telling you where that student should be.
And I think we mentioned this on the last episode that we talked to it that like, it doesn’t necessarily mean that the best is just means, Hey, they should know this, if that makes sense.
Richard Matthews: That’s it’s really fascinating to because like I see the same thing in my life, right? Run a we run a podcasting agency. So called push button podcasts. That’s what we run this your podcast through and on the mastery stage.
I have to teach all the time, like 345 times a day on the couple of things that are really important for podcasting. And one of the things that I’ve noticed is the more that I teach, the more that I actually get up and have to explain. The same basic thing over and over again, the better I get at not only doing it myself, but [00:28:00] also at explaining it to the next group of people.
And so it helps me to understand the things that are actually important, the things that actually like move the needle for people in their understanding. And I know like, I, see that in you in our training classes as like I ask questions or my son asks questions. You’re in that mastery stage where you’re teaching, right?
You’re teaching. Someone else and you can see like when I ask a question like I know this regularly I really was thinking like I feel like there’s gonna be a dumb question But you know for someone who’s going through and learning these things. I’ll ask a question. I have to think to yourself You’re like, oh, yeah I do actually have a whole process for that And then you have to like backtrack in your own head and work through your process so you can learn to teach it And so it’s not just like when you get to the mastery stage where you’re at, right?
You’re like, I think you said fourth degree right fourth degree black belt that you are learning probably as much from teaching us as we are learning from you while you’re teaching us. Right, so the journey doesn’t stop just because you are at the
Master Victor: That would say so.
Richard Matthews: Yeah.
Master Victor: Exactly. It always keeps going. And the [00:29:00] second you stop growing, you can maybe stay stagnant, right? You can keep that flat line, which is still really hard to do. But usually you start declining, right? The technique starts to wane the less you use it. And it requires constant practice and utilization. It’s like, if you let a car with gas sit for a while, like the gas might go bad.
And the next time you go to start it, there might be a whole bunch of issues. And that happens. Essentially with our bodies, right? You don’t use a specific muscle or a ligament for a while. And you go to throw a kick, you might hurt something. Your body may not remember exactly that perfect way to throw that kick and it’s been a while.
So it takes a little bit for that mind and body connection. And mind muscle connection to reestablish if you haven’t been exercising that. And this comes down to changes in the brain where the more we train, the more we strengthen specific [00:30:00] neural pathways and strengthen them. So this includes focus.
This includes perception, situational awareness, establishing a sense of calm. All of those can start to decrease as you lessen training. And that also has different effects throughout our life. And this is why we call it. A lifestyle because you’re changing the way you live, not only inside the dojang, but outside of it as well.
We’re learning to be more mindful in the way that we speak to other people, in the way we speak to ourselves, and in the way we go about all these different tasks, because we know at the end of the day, it affects how we’re thinking, and it affects how we’re performing in every different situation. And this is a good transition into how cross training and I guess training like meditation, breath, work, calisthenics, strength, training and stretching really plays a role in your development in martial arts, where, you know, I’ve had a few of my past students come up [00:31:00] to me and, you know, explain to me that, you know, in, so a few years ago, it was right before the pandemic.
Everything closed down and I actually stopped teaching at the school that I was teaching at and I opened up my school, Ferro Academy in September of 2020 to start teaching in person outside in like a safe environment. And. You know, I essentially got new students. All my old students stayed at the old school.
It was closed down throughout for almost a year. And they started, you know, ramping up training again. And since then I’ve been traveling, so I haven’t been able to teach in person. We train online, but a lot of the students that used to teach in person, they’ve come up to me and they’ve said like, Hey, you know, this teacher is not doing this.
We don’t exercise much anymore. Or they’ve gone to a different school and they now experience a different way of teaching. They say, Hey, we’re not doing this. And I feel these different impacts, like some martial arts schools, they won’t. [00:32:00] Do physical exercise, which I’m completely against. Like you, you need to do physical exercise to stay fit.
So you can properly defend yourself in a situation. No, they’ll come to me and like, yeah, we just do kicks and forms. We don’t do any pushups, no squats, no running. I’m like, okay, this, I wasn’t aware that some schools are just, they’re just trying to learn technique. And I don’t necessarily agree with that.
You know, this can be applied to. Any discipline where, you know, you go to, to learn any skill and they’re missing different aspects that are going to have this compounding effect on the direct training of that skill.
Richard Matthews: Yeah. Yeah. It’s the same thing in,
Master Victor: this might’ve impacted your personal decision.
Richard Matthews: yeah, it’s, it runs over in a lot of, in a lot of worlds where, when I’m looking to get good at anything, I’m always looking at what are the skills that are analogous to it. You should also get good at. So if you’re looking to get good at writing, you also want to look good, get good at getting speaking and you want to get good at learning how to do [00:33:00] research.
You want to learn to get good at doing storytelling, right? There’s all sorts of aspects that go into that. And so you cross train on all those different things so you can sit down and actually do the writing and what I’ve noticed in the in working with you at FAIR Academy is that you, we do train the techniques and like the techniques are an important part of our stuff, but you also are training us in so many other aspects of it, so right we’re doing the cross training in the breath work and in the meditation and in the the yoga and the stretching and the I’m going to forget the other one, the calisthenics is the word.
And all of those things are having a big impact on everything from like, my posture, to how I breathe, to all these, like, they, they all tie into the little aspects that you’re learning and they make your techniques better. They make your ability to understand the techniques better. And the other thing that it does is You’re building the skill of mastery, right?
Like, because that’s what this episode is about, is like that timeline of mastery, is like, that’s, it’s a skill set to learn how to master a skill. And you’re using [00:34:00] Taekwondo as like your skeleton framework, that like, hey, this is the thing we’re going to master, and what does it take to master something?
Well, it takes the time. You have to go through this novice You know, advanced expert, you know, master sort of like timeline, but you also have to master like all the little branching skills that come off of it in order to actually truly be a master. So you’re actually teaching the skill of mastery.
So you can take that and then learn other skills. And I know I’ve seen some of your work in other areas, right? You’re also a fire spinner and you do incredible things. And right, I would imagine you probably see the same kind of like skill sets that you have to build in those other areas and it follows the same sort of journey.
Master Victor: Absolutely. And you know, the more we do that cross training, it helps progress that main focus. And like you’re saying, we’re learning how to learn. And once you. Once you understand that, oh, I can apply this to all these other things, it’ll compound and accelerate your [00:35:00] rate of improvement, essentially reducing the length of time it’s going to take you to master a specific technique or to master an art in general.
So the further along that you get. The better you get at getting better and that essentially just compounds and you become this whole new creature, essentially.
Richard Matthews: it’s an upward spiral of positivity. If you’ll
Master Victor: this is probably one of the reasons why exactly. And this is maybe one of the reasons why we make it take so long at the black belt stage and at the higher belt levels where.
You know, I think you’ll go from a belt, white, yellow and orange is maybe two to four months. Of time in between those belts. Normally I sometimes make people take longer just to develop more concrete foundation. To me, that’s one of the most important stages is white, yellow and orange belt. But you know, once you get to, let’s say [00:36:00] brown belt, it takes you two years to get your black belt.
Usually, unless you move in really fast, it takes you a year at recommended black belt to get to the next step. And we do this because the level of refinement, If you don’t understand how to apply that mastery skill is so big because you’ve learned this technique, right? And you’ve learned it in a specific way and you’ve been doing it for so long.
And now we’re saying, hey, we want you to change how you move your knee at this specific moment. And then at this specific moment, we want you to extend your hips. And you’re like, what, but I’ve been doing it this way. And I’m like yeah. Now we want you to make it better and it’s going to be harder and it’s going to be more challenging.
It’s going to be faster, more powerful. And you’re like, oh, okay, well I’ll do that even though it’s a lot harder. And that’s really what we’re getting to at those different stages is we’re taking what used to take all of your brain just to do the technique. And now we’re saying, Hey. You can now add this [00:37:00] more to it and you can make it better.
And there’s very few people who at a novice level can perform.
Richard Matthews: And like, the capability gap comes from things like, like, right now, my son and I are struggling. Well, not struggling. We’re just in that novice stage of like, like, we can’t do like, the full splits yet in either of the things, which restricts our hip movement. Right? So, like, some of those things that you’re talking about in the more advanced levels, like, our body isn’t even capable of getting into the position to add those yet.
Right. And so we, we have to go through the work of building those novice and intermediate skills and the body that’s capable of doing them before we can get to the next stage and actually get into those more advanced techniques and the more advanced, like refinements, because like, I can’t get my hips fully sideways yet.
Right. And it won’t, I won’t be able to do that until I can get the full splits, which we’re working on. And you’ve mentioned, it’s probably going to take a year or two. But like some of those more advanced things that you’re talking about, like I, I just physically can’t do yet. Right.
Master Victor: Yeah. And in, in the progress that you’ve [00:38:00] made from when, you know, you started training is very significant, but you know, you’re right. It takes a while and we want to do it slowly so that we don’t injure specific ligaments and connective tissue in the body. And that also comes back to, you know, the physical transformation and the mental transformation that you want to go through this.
You know, novice to expert stage is your body has to get used to and strong enough to be able to do some of these techniques where, you know, not a lot of people can do a pistol squat, which is a one legged squat. Not a lot of people can do a one handed pushup and we’re working towards these things and they’re, you know, feats of strength, let’s say, for example, in these, but they have direct correlation to how you use.
You know, your body control. Can you, you know, do a sweeping kick that essentially requires you to do a pistol squat. Do you have the flexibility to do the split so you can do a head level kick, right? That all has different effects and [00:39:00] it allows you to perform these techniques differently. So that’s extremely important.
And the more you train. The more capable you’re going to be, and it trains your body to allow you to do that.
Richard Matthews: Yeah where I see the same thing like with we’re working on like our roundhouse kick and the ax kick, which are like your base level of kicks. And I know, like, one of our goals is to be able to get those kicks, both the head level. And I know that, like, the. Neither my son or I are getting our kicks to head level yet and it’s because we don’t have the the hamstring flexibility to get up there.
And it’s like, like, we can’t actually move on to the next level kicks until we build those baseline things. And Like, it’s cool to see the progress as you’re going through and to see, like, what, you know, what skills you have now, and how, like, what you’re working on translates into more advanced skills and then it’s also interesting to see how, like, as we’re building all of this foundational skill sets, particularly, like, one of the reasons why I’m excited about doing the martial arts and the calisthenics is, like, all of these skills and the body that [00:40:00] comes along with them translates into almost anything else we want to do, right?
It gives us a, Okay. Yeah, like, well, to just use the term from your show, an unlimited self, right? The unlimited you, right? Like that my body is not the thing that is telling me what I can or can’t do today. Um, That’s, and that’s such a cool, a cool progress to see happening in my own life.
Master Victor: Yeah. And, you know, for, to kind of play into where you’re seeing here like. I started fire spinning maybe two years ago now, and I’ve only been really dancing for maybe two years, and my progress through that has been significantly higher had I not done martial arts, because it’s given me a bit, you know.
More awareness of my body and how I move more control over it. And I can take that and translate it into these different subjects. Like I know for certain that my boat training, that’s essentially the staff training. We call it a bow. You know, that has [00:41:00] played, you know, unsurmountable influence.
In using the fire staff, you know, now you can’t do specific techniques. Like I’m not able to touch myself at the ends of it. Like I do when I tuck it for a weapon and the fire staff, you flow more, but there’s a lot of the movements and there’s a lot of essentially the focus and the way I’m moving my hand correlates directly to using that.
And you know, that, that took like a mental and physical transformation. And applying it differently and taking that mastery and applying it to something else as well.
Richard Matthews: Yeah, and I’ve noticed, I noticed the same thing with. My son, right? So my son actually has been fire spinning for a long time. He’s been fire spinning for almost four years now. And so he came to martial arts with that skill set. And I see him picking up skills in martial arts. Pretty quickly, which is cool to see, but he’s also, he picks up a lot of things really fast.
And it’s [00:42:00] interesting. So for someone who’s his age, right in that young teenage level, where like, if you learn how to master a skill like early in your life he just picks up and master his skills so much faster. Like I have to put in a lot more effort to master something than he does from like a time.
Right. I think the effort is probably both is similar, but like, he just gets there faster because he’s younger in his brain. Or pliable and he can just pick up skills really fast and like just in the last year he’s picked up He started training bo staff with you. He’s gotten really good with it. He’s probably going to start fire spinning that this year and he’s learning the rope dart and he’s had that for like Three days and he’s already looks as good as some of the people i’ve seen performing with it and he’s just picking up skills really quickly.
And so like to that mastery and physical transformation thing The earlier in your life you can learn to build this Mastery timeline right and
actually like skill you have, right? And the more you can apply it in your life. And I think that’s really cool.
Master Victor: Absolutely. [00:43:00] Absolutely.
Master Victor: And, you know, we’re also learning, you know, the cultural and historical aspects of these arts. So through learning Taekwondo, we’re learning essentially Korean culture, where we often bow as a greeting [00:44:00] and as a way of showing respect. We’re learning how to count in a different language.
We’re learning different commands in a different language. And this goes back to keeping the tradition of the art, which Like, let’s say you go to like a UFC gym and you’re learning straight MMA, you’re going to be learning different striking formats, maybe Brazilian Jiu Jitsu or wrestling on the ground.
And, but you’re not really touching the deeper aspects of these individual arts, you know, their meaning, their cultural representation. And this gives different perspective into, you know, not only how the art got to where it is. The meaning of it, but it also carries with it the specific, like,
Richard Matthews: provided by
Master Victor: safe space.
You know, you step into a dojo or a training space and you know, that you’re being taken care of that. You’re, you know, you’re there [00:45:00] to grow and to learn. And it’s a very different mindset. Because of this historical and cultural respect to the art that you start to learn as you, you know, you start to master these things and then you start to understand, Oh, Hey, this is why about, Oh, this is why we do this because it brings about the different environment in training.
And I think a lot of people don’t necessarily connect the dots and how important that is. And I know a lot of Brazilian jujitsu gyms really do a good job of this.
Richard Matthews: like participating in
Master Victor: a safe atmosphere. Let’s say, for example, you’re training somewhere and here comes this guy who thinks he’s better than everybody.
Who’s trying to like beat everybody and tap everybody out. That’s not going to be a good environment to be in where you’re not going to feel safe. You’re going to, you’re going to go roll with that person. And next thing you know, they got you an arm bar and they might overextend and you may break or hurt your arm.
So, you know, the way we do it in. Having that respect for the [00:46:00] tradition, the culture, and learning the, those traditional roots really helps us understand the core of the martial arts, which we’re learning, you know, self control, we’re learning perseverance and respect for not only ourselves, but the people around us as well.
And I think that’s really understated in a lot of different schools and in martial arts journey. I
Richard Matthews: I really love the the thought process too of balancing tradition and innovation. And I, this is something I talk about a lot in our podcast on, you know, on, on we have a podcast called the hero show. And we talk about this. This idea of balancing tradition versus innovation, and it’s super important.
I think a lot of people miss it. And you see this in politics. People argue about this all the time. People argue about, you know, conservatives versus progressivism. And that’s the same argument, tradition versus innovation. And you realize that, like, innovation and the future and, like, actually getting good at things and progressing things forward has to be seated in the traditions of [00:47:00] our past, right?
Because we didn’t get to where we are. on accident, right? Right. And we haven’t gotten to, you know, like, you know, particularly like with martial arts as the example, like it didn’t just happen yesterday. There’s thousands of years of history here on why we’re holding our hands this way and why we’re bowing the way that we are and why we’re doing like all the little things.
There’s reasons for those things to exist. And, you know, you might find in the process of innovation, right? You know, just to use a an example, everyone is familiar with. You know, in the United States, the, you know, we had this declaration of independence that said all men are created equal.
And then we still had slavery, right? And so at some point we were like the tradition, you know, the tradition of slavery. Conflicted with the innovation of all men are created equal. So we eventually fought a war over that and we changed it. Right? We changed the, that, that story.
And so you have to do that balance. Sometimes there’s things in tradition that you’ll have to remove you know, for the sake of innovation to make something better, but there is so much to our history. And right? Like, we’ve survived on this planet for thousands of years. [00:48:00] So, you know, there’s benefits to the tradition and there’s benefits to the things that we do.
And so it makes sense to. Learn those stories and to understand them and to see where, like what we were talking about before, where it’s okay to break the traditional rules to make something better and where the traditional rules shouldn’t be broken, right? Because, Because we’ve already gone down that road and realize that those all, those are all terrible.
And so you have to have both. And I think that’s a, it’s a really important distinction.
Master Victor: Yes, absolutely. And, you know, some of those traditional values get lost in a lot of schools, either because, you know, they haven’t been taught that and then they’re not teaching it, which is a problem, or they just don’t think it’s important. And the traditional values give that kind of scaffolding, not only for how you teach, how you treat each other but meaning behind what you’re doing, like Back in, let’s say, you know, BC era, [00:49:00] BCE.
You would have martial artists venturing, walking as nomads, and they would share martial arts with each other through forms. So it’s a series of techniques put together that you can share with people, and you essentially learn some of their styles. This is why we do forms. It breaks down different ways of using these techniques and different ways to apply them.
And then you perform your form and then someone else can learn those techniques through just literally looking at your form. And that’ll be called a pump, say in Korean or katas for karate. And forgot what the Kung Fu iteration of it is, but these forms allow us
to share really complex techniques. Absolutely. And you know, you can have a Kung Fu person share their form with me and I can share my Taekwondo form with them and we’ll both learn something and we’ll see very similar moves like you have the flying [00:50:00] sidekick in almost all of these Eastern Asia arts from Japan to China to Korea, you have the flying sidekick, but they’re called different things and they’re done slightly different, but it’s essentially the same move.
Yeah. And, you know, you’ll go about it in a different way and this could be applied in different situations. Like if maybe you don’t have as much space to do your kick, maybe you want to, you know, do it while going backwards or you have to cover a longer range. These essentially like cultural and traditional ways of doing things can teach us.
Essentially the history of the move and then allow us to further innovate. And a lot of the current innovations that is going on in tech window are essentially coming from the higher output that we can achieve through, you know, Increasing our flexibility, our mobility, and our strength. So the science of exercise has really progressed [00:51:00] over the last, I want to say 20, 30 years and
you know, the testing of what different exercises work and how to do them to make yourself.
You know, see the benefits of it better. For example, stretching, you know, traditionally a lot of schools would have a longer stretching session in the beginning, and then they would go into their kicks and then do some exercises somewhere in there. And then you finished the class off with a very light stretching, if any at all.
And a lot of studies will show that, you know, dynamic stretching and warming up is beneficial in the beginning, and then you go into. Your core training, and then you stretch at the end where your muscles are already loose, and that allows you to get a deeper stretch, helping lengthen and further your growth and flexibility.
And that’s a relatively new innovation that we’re starting to incorporate in our class. And these. Innovations, the more that we learn, you know, [00:52:00] through the science of living and, you know, of training and the science of martial arts, we’re able to apply that and teach better to the next generation. And you’re seeing A lot of a lot more progressive fighters, essentially a lot more disciplined martial artists in many respects because we’re able to teach them these complex moves and these these fundamental ways of thinking at a younger age, rather than it being like, Oh, you’re just learning and kicking a punch now, let’s teach you everything and I’m seeing some very new.
Very promising kids who, you know, they’re 14, 15, already a second or third degree black belt. My friend master Ian, I think got his fourth degree when he was under 18, which is amazing. And, you know, they’re really pushing the limits of like what you can do because they’re starting to train at a young age, they’re being exposed to different things and they’re helping innovate the art.
[00:53:00] Yeah.
Richard Matthews: have this concept that I like to tell people or teach people about. And it’s the the art of potential, right? And we have our known limits, right? What we actually know is 1 box that we all live in, right? Those, we can see the edges of that box because we’re inside of it.
Right? And like, the biggest example of that is like, the, you know, the 4 minute mile, everyone knew before the 1960s that you couldn’t run faster than a 4 minute mile. But. Outside of that box is what, where the actual human potential really is. It’s like our known potential and then our real potential and our real potential is some other box that we can’t see the edges of.
And one of the things that’s been really fascinating to watch over the last 20 years is we are seeing in every category of, you know, human experience that we are pushing the edges of what we know our capabilities are. And we’re exploring and expanding our potential. And so, you know, now.
If you don’t run a four minute mile, you’re not even competitive, right? And so we’re seeing that happen in just like every sort of category. And so bringing it back to martial arts, you’re seeing a lot of those same things. Like how does what we’re learning about [00:54:00] nutrition. impact what we’re capable of doing in and outside of the dojang with martial arts?
What about what we’re learning about stretching and muscle development and how it’s built and how the brain actually builds you know, pathways for repeating motion? Like, you know, some of those things, like we actually understand them now and have the science behind it where we didn’t before. And so we’re able to push the edges of what our actual potential is capable of.
And so You know that’s where, like, because we’re in this really advanced stage of being able to innovate, it’s really important to keep, okay, those traditions as well. Right? And that’s where it’s like, we could really blind ourselves to the traditions of what we already know, if you’re not careful about it.
And so anyways, that’s where. One of the things I’ve been really enjoying about your class and your teaching style here at Fair Academy is that you do teach both of those things, but you have, like, there’s no fear of the innovation and there’s no fear of the tradition.
You can use both of those things and really create a holistic person, right? And unlimited you.
Master Victor: absolutely. [00:55:00] Yeah. And here’s kind of one of the pitfalls of the innovation that we’ve seen in Taekwondo, especially over the last, I want to say 20 years when. Taekwondo got added to the Olympics. It really changed the sport because when they added it to the Olympics, we don’t score it like boxing.
It’s not, Oh, you can knock somebody out. And it’s called point sparring. You get the specific point for different hits. So you get one point for a punch to the body. Normally two points for a kick to the body normally, and then three to five points, depending on what tournament you’re at for a kick to the head.
And I think they give more points for like a turning kick or jumping kick to the head, depending on your tournament. And what this does is. It changes the way you train, and this also goes for Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. Point rolling you get a point for throwing somebody down, you get a point for mounting them and taking their position over.
It changes the way you think about rolling and about self defense. And I don’t think this is necessarily a [00:56:00] good evolution in either discipline or in any discipline where you’re prizing making a point over self defense. Because the people who train those specific ways, They’re gonna be, they’re going to be developing bad habits in the self defense respect.
For example, if you watch Taekwondo Olympics, their hands are down here. You can’t even see my hands. They should be up here, guarding the face, ready to block the head. Oftentimes their hands are down. They’re not even afraid of that head level kick. And, you know, if somebody does get in close, their head is completely open.
They’ll get knocked out by somebody who’s actually practicing the self defense aspect of the art, because. What, what ends up happening with a point sparring is use a lot of front leg kicks, which are really fast, but they usually don’t have a lot of power and you can walk through, I would take a front leg kick to get inside of them to then give a more powerful strike.
If I knew that’s the situation I was in, right? So that compromises [00:57:00] your self defense. Aspect of your training where you’re putting yourself in actually more danger by training these this way Than you would if you were training in the traditional sense If you look at Taekwondo in I want to say the 60s or 70s There’s a lot of good videos out there in different trainings, especially if you’re on social media a lot They practice speed, power, and really hard delivery.
Like you’ll see somebody going off on a bag. It looks like they’re about to like destroy the world versus a lot of these new style. They’re just flickering their front foot. And you’re like what is this? Like you may touch the person, but you’re not actually delivering an impact. It’s not actually functional.
So we have to be careful in our innovation that like you’re saying, we keep an eye on the tradition of it. Why is this art a thing? Why do we do it this way? And is the new way better? And if it’s not, why? Right. And one of, from a personal story, all [00:58:00] of the schools that we trained with in Maryland Taekwondo we would have essentially a local tournament and none of our schools agreed that the new point sparring method of.
The Olympics is, we just don’t like it. We’re all against it because of the way you have to train. And we came up with a new method of essentially scoring sparring, which is closer to boxing. You know, are they effectively using the martial arts for self defense? Are they applying their high level moves effectively?
Can they block? Are they reacting? And it’s not just, Oh, am I hitting you in the head? Am I doing a head level kick? Am I kicking you in the body? And then I’m scoring a point down. And we’re not doing that because what we’ve seen is when you’d score it like that, you prize specific things that shouldn’t be.
Allowed right in a self defense aspect. Like if you throw a front level kick, I’m going to go through it and back, kick you in the chest, and then you’re going to [00:59:00] be down on the ground with a broken rib. Right. So can they block, can they move, can they use their art in a self defense way that you can actively see.
And what we saw is a lot of, I would say 90 percent of the kids that we saw sparring didn’t block at all. Like they just got hit and they took it. And then I got up there to spar and like, I’m blocking everything. This is what I’m used to. I’m doing my scissor blocks. You throw a head level cake.
I’m blocking up here and I won my match mostly because of how I was utilizing my self defense techniques. And, you know, I did throw a hook kick and I got this guy on the head and I got, you know, that, that was a display of using my higher level techniques. But like the person who I was sparring against, they were using a lot of the front level kicks.
He would come in over my head and try to land a kick on my head. And it’s like, okay, you may touch my head, but it’s not going to hurt. And when he did that I trained to punch to the head. I threw a reactive punch towards [01:00:00] it. I pull it back. So I didn’t hit him because it was a sparring situation, but his head was open.
You know, if this is a street fight, you’re going to get knocked out and on beyond the ground. So, you know, that’s where being careful of how we’re training can have a direct impact on your performance and your self defense. So,
Richard Matthews: I think
Master Victor: you know, there’s some innovations that are amazing that really further the art.
Richard Matthews: that’s really
fascinating. What you’re talking about is you’re talking about incentive structures, right? So the innovation of incentive structures. And we talk a lot in the business world about incentivizing the action that you want to take. And so in point sparring, right, you’ve incentivized a specific aspect, and they’ve incentivized something.
And they didn’t. That’s why the tradition part is so important. Because innovating requires that you try something, see how it works. against the tradition, right? Is it improving this or is it making it worse? And so what you’re saying is like they’ve got this innovation, point sparring, and compared to the tradition, it’s, it is, it’s failing.
So now you come [01:01:00] back to the tradition, you try something else, right? That’s what innovation is about. It’s about experimenting and failing, and experimenting and failing, you get something that’s good, and the stuff that’s good is the stuff that survives, right? It’s the stuff that gets added to tradition.
Right. And so that’s where you have to have balance of tradition and innovation. So you’re saying, hey, this point squaring method is not a good innovation because it gives bad results. Let’s rethink about how we do this, right? And so your schools in Maryland were talking about how to develop a different incentive structure in order to score it and turn it into a, you know, into a sport that people want to watch and be judged on, right?
So, can you have both? Can we still score this and still keep all of the the traditional aspects? And so, that might be the kind of thing that might get experimented with over the next couple of decades until you get something that actually ends up being The tradition, you know, get added to the tradition of martial arts, and that’s why you really have to have both of those pieces of balancing the tradition with the innovation, because without the tradition, then you just end up doing, you know, to your point, dumb things, or in this case, dangerous things, because, you know, you’re[01:02:00] the original purpose of a martial art is for self defense.
Master Victor: exactly. Exactly. And over the recent years, especially with the technological development, they have test guards that now measure how hard a strike is. So you can actually, they have a health bar. It’s almost like a video game. There’s two health bars. And the harder you hit somebody, the more health it takes away from You know, their bar and essentially the more damage you cause, the more their health bar reduces.
And one of the reasons that the Taekwondo has practiced the way that it is today, where only black belts are allowed to kick to the head and we don’t allow punching to the head is because of the potential damage that it can do. Like I’ve gotten and I’ve given concussions while training sparring. It is, it’s a thing that happens and this is where control is really important to learn.
And it’s probably one of the reasons why Taekwondo has evolved the way it has today is because [01:03:00] they’re trying to keep. The athletes, the martial artists safe in the training. Now, again, like you were saying, you know, there’s some negative aspects to it where you’re learning these bad habits and we’re slowly finding out, Oh, Hey, maybe not a point system.
Maybe we put a really nice chest guard that measures the, you know, the intensity of the impact, and maybe we do a better head gear for the head. So when you do receive head shots, you aren’t, you know, getting a concussion. Because you can generate so much more power with your legs. And if you get hit in the head with even medium intensity kick, you’re probably going to get a concussion.
And, you know, I’ve had students get concussions. I’ve gotten concussions. It’s not a fun thing to experience is not good for your brain to be, you know, jostled around. And there’s been a lot of improvements in headgear. And I think I’m personally excited to see the direction that the [01:04:00] sport’s going to go.
Once we remove this whole point sparring thing from the system and we really get back to, Hey, who’s striking more and who’s striking harder and more effectively.
Richard Matthews: And to your point earlier, it’s a self defense thing, right? So if you’re sparring, you shouldn’t get hit in the head, right? You should be blocking those things. Your hands should be up. If you’re getting hit in the head, you’re doing something wrong. Heh Heh.
Master Victor: Yes, exactly. Exactly. Yeah. And you know, if you’re not learning to defend yourself, what are you learning? You know, it’s the whole point of martial arts where we’re mastering our bodies, our minds. And we’re instilling internal peace so that we can spread it. We’re learning deescalate situations by, you know, not getting ourselves all riled up and letting, you know, somebody who’s calling us stupid get to us.
And we’re able to walk away from situations. And this is where, like you’re saying the traditional values and the traditional [01:05:00] teachings really come in because we’re learning these things that Some schools, in my opinion, honestly, just don’t even teach and they don’t find it important because they don’t think people want to learn these things.
And it’s not about what they want to learn. It’s what they need to learn. Like people need to learn how to control their minds so that way they can control their actions. A lot of in today’s culture, we want to control other people and tell everybody else what to do. Or we forget to tell ourselves, you know, I’m the boss of me.
I can only really tell myself what I’m going to do, what I’m going to say, I’m going to act, and once we realize that, that we can only Ask or suggest people what they’re going to do. We all need to turn that light within and control ourselves and master ourselves. Then it’s going to be a whole new wave of evolution throughout society, in my opinion.
And that’s where I think, you know, implementing Taekwondo or at least martial arts in general, any kind of martial arts, whether you’re learning Kung Fu, karate. Taekwondo, I always come back to [01:06:00] those Muay Thai, Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, it can create such a strong foundation for child development. And, you know, you see this in China, you see this in Korea where majority of the kids there are, they have to either learn Taekwondo or they have to learn something else so they can learn how to learn, they can learn how to grow and you get better, more effective people this way.
And, you know, I think it’s really undervalued in teaching the youth
Richard Matthews: thought on that, like, it’s, we’ve been talking about, like, the pace of innovation just in our world at large, right? The amount of things that have happened just in the last several years with, you know, 5G internet, 100Xing our speed capabilities and, like, the innovations that are happening in batteries and the innovations that are happening in learning and in science and in processing power, all these things are, like, our world is moving really fast.
Like really fast. And if we’re going to be able to keep up with the pace of innovation, we have to [01:07:00] master the skill of learning, right? We have to master this skill of mastery so that we can just as human beings, keep up with the pace of the way our world is moving. And like, it’s one of the things that like I’ve really been paying a lot of attention to with raising our kids is getting them into things like martial arts and because it is it’s expressly a tradition that is thousands of years old that.
Is geared towards teaching human beings how to master themselves and part of mastering yourself is like mastering the art of learning, and that’s what they’re built. They’re built on those foundations and, you know, kids who don’t learn how to do this stuff and even adults who learn how to do this stuff, right?
Learn how to master. Something like martial arts allows you to master all those other skills. We’ve talked about that already, and it’s not going to be a thing that’s optional 15 years from now. It’s going to be the kind of thing that like, either you’re learning to master these things and learning to master yourself, or you’re not going to be able to keep up, you won’t be competitive in any marketplace.
So,
Master Victor: I agree with that. Absolutely. And just as a kind of last,
flying over me.
[01:08:00] So as a last little note to kind of everybody, anyone who’s out there looking to get into martial arts. Make sure not only first you pick a discipline that you feel you connect with, but go to the school and see if you can do a free trial class. They don’t offer a free trial class and they have a four class program.
Try that out before you commit to, you know, Lifelong training at that school. And you want to see, you know, are they making you do physical activity? Are they making you do jumping jacks, pushups, squats? Are they having you stretch for an extended period of time? Are they going over a technique slowly, allowing you to refine it, giving you good feedback?
And are they teaching you, you know, core values of the discipline or are they just getting up there and the class is kind of boring. They just show you a technique and then the club and then you go home. You know, when you’re looking for a good martial arts school, try it out. Make sure [01:09:00] it’s done well.
Make sure you’re getting all of these different aspects of it. And if you’re not, go find a different teacher. Because you’re going to be wasting your time and the schools that are worth it. When you take a class, you know, and now don’t go to the, don’t go to the schools who, you know, they say like, Oh, I’m going to keep you away with my chi and they can like throw you down with one hand and all this stuff.
Don’t go there. You’re going to end up getting hurt or learning something that’s going to put you in a really hard situation. You know, which ones are the good martial arts schools by how they teach. And if you can’t observe a class, take a class. If you can’t take a class, find somewhere else because usually the places who can definitely teach the right way, they’re going to have some kind of way that you can try out the program because they’re not only, you’re not only testing them out, they’re also testing you out to see if you fit with their school.
And that, that, that has a big effect in it where. You know, I’m not going to let [01:10:00] someone join my school. Who’s going to be trying to be UFC champion and coming in, trying to beat everybody. That’s not the environment we’re creating at our school. So find a school that fits for you, try it out. And if you can’t find one.
And if there’s not one available, you know, look around a wider area. And you can also look up our schools, fairacademy. com slash you, and it gives you information on our training. We do online training and eventually we’ll have in person training as well. We go into each one of these. Topics very deeply.
And we spend a lot of time going into them so that you don’t miss something that’s important that may be critical for your self development.
Richard Matthews: Yeah, I have one
Master Victor: I feel like that pretty much covers. Is there anything else you’d like to say?
Richard Matthews: Yeah, just one more question and it’s The way that we met, you were actually teaching at a festival, right, and I actually got to like, sample a class, so to speak and I’m just curious, is that something that just you do, or is that something that other schools do too, or is where, like, the teachers might actually be out teaching at either local [01:11:00] festivals or local things like that, that they, that, you know, if someone’s looking for a martial arts teacher, one of the reasons we connected was because you were out actually teaching free classes and, like, if that is a thing that happens regularly, how do people find things like that?
Master Victor: Yeah. That’s a really good question. I mean, I’ve done a lot of, let’s say like elementary and middle schools. They’ll have like a career day. Some martial arts schools will go there. They’ll take. Some of their students and they’ll do a demonstration county fairs. I’ve seen different martial arts schools go there.
I personally like to go to more intimate events for those kind of things. Either music art festivals or specific more holistic festivals. I’ve done one at Renaissance fair style event. And it’s usually in the events calendar. If they’re going to have any kind of display like that, sometimes they don’t even put that they’re going to have some kind of martial arts display on there.
But I definitely know that. More schools and other people do it as well. I only [01:12:00] like to do it if it’s calling and if it’s the right environment, I don’t necessarily like to go to extremely large events and do this because the attention is, you’re kind of looking everywhere. It’s hard to get people, you know, to follow a 30 minute to one hour training.
If there’s. A mass amount of people there. So it depends on the event for me personally.
Richard Matthews: Yeah, so one one more question for you before we finish this off and it’s just you know in the line of finding someone that You want to do right because we talked about this like you’re gonna commit five ten years of your life to this mastery journey So you want to find? Trainer that you really connect with and so, you know, there’s probably going to be a difference if you’re looking for your child Who wants to start this or if you’re looking for yourself as an adult?
And I just want to see if you can speak a couple of minutes on what you might be looking for if you were looking For something your child or if you’re looking for something to develop yourself as an adult I’m, like what kind of things might you be considering there if you’re looking for a master to train with?
So there were scores [01:13:00] of participants
Master Victor: Yeah, absolutely. Like for child development is very different than adult teaching. And I do both, but they’re very different. Now you’re going to have a school that does both. You can have a teacher who does both. They’re hard to find, in my opinion, because a lot of schools that teach children, they’re either too loose, they don’t have enough discipline, or they’re too disciplined and they don’t allow the kids for creative development.
There’s a good fine middle ground, especially for kids, where at a young age, they have to learn a specific style of discipline. So, you know, are the kids talking back to the students? Or to the teacher, that’s a big thing. If they’re doing that openly in that teaching environment, it’s probably not the right environment to put your kid in.
Are they being patient in teaching the kids, the techniques, you know, are they explaining things in different ways? Because not every kid’s going to understand. The same thing [01:14:00] explained one way, you know, are they taking, do they have assistant instructors that they’re able to go around and help you know, some like a class of 30 students.
I usually have an assistant or two that can go around and help fix different things as I’m teaching and leading the class. And especially for the kids class, you know, is everyone paying attention? A lot of martial arts schools. Unfortunately, it can get boring because of the way that it’s being taught and you’ll start to see kids playing with the pants and all this stuff, right?
So well learned class is very organized. Everyone’s yep. Yeah. To be, you’re holding that ready stance. And the teacher is often able to hold everybody’s attention. A hundred percent of the class. And if somebody falls off, they are good at seeing it and calling everybody back to attention. I think those are the most important things when.
The kids classes is concern as far as adults, you know, are you [01:15:00] getting physical activity? Is that teacher knowledgeable? And you’re only really going to be able to know that through seeing how they teach to, and you can also look at the more advanced students, right? So if you go in there and you watch only the lower belts, like, you know, white, yellow, and orange belt, maybe come and watch a higher belt level class, you know, look at their techniques.
Are they doing high level stuff? Are they being taught? Well,
Richard Matthews: you can
Master Victor: and you want to look at, you know, especially the physical activity parts for adults. Like, are you getting, you know, pushups squats? Are you doing these calisthenics to help strengthen your body during your training? Are you stretching at the end versus the beginning?
Are you practicing meditation breath work? Or are you just learning martial arts?
So for kids, I would look more of like the style of teaching
Richard Matthews: go back to,
Master Victor: for the adults. I’ll look at more of the content. [01:16:00] And usually if the style of teaching is there for the young kids, you’re going to have a lot of that content already there.
Of course, you want to also look at those things that I mentioned for the adults, for the kids, but the disciplinary, the attention holding for kids is especially going to be important, especially with, you know, tell style phones and all this stuff, like kids are on their devices all day, so you want to have a teacher who can hold their attention.
Who can speak to them with patience and calm and show them a different way to do things that they’re not yelling at the kids. That’s a big thing. You don’t want a school who’s out there and they’re yelling at the kids. It’s not a really healthy environment. So you want to, you know, check the environment, make sure that the teacher is knowledgeable and is treating the kids with respect, but also holding them to a higher standard.
So they’re being treated with respect. For example when I do a school all the kids have to say, yes, sir. If you don’t say yes, sir, you get pushups. That’s just how it is, and that creates a sense of respect towards all of the teachers [01:17:00] and to all of the students as well. We always bow to each other, right, as a greeting, as a way of saying goodbye, and also as a way of showing respect.
And these things are there to create a healthy environment for learning for not only the students, but for teaching for The teachers, and oftentimes I find that if those elements aren’t there, then the class is very kind of loose and playful and not a good learning environment. Like, you’ll go to some schools and half the room, the kids will be talking and playing around rather than paying attention to the lesson.
That’s not a good teaching environment. It’s not a good learning environment. You want, you know, minimal conversation while training. And maybe everyone breaks up into a specific drill and you have one partner holding something and somebody kicking, there might be a little bit of talking, which is totally fine, but there should be full focus on that activity, especially at that higher belts, the higher belts are kind of displaying this lack of behavior, not a good sign.[01:18:00]
And that takes a good teacher to be able to handle and navigate those different situations in a healthy way. Rather than, you know, I’ve caught myself doing this in the past. It was just like yelling and being like, you can’t do this. And it doesn’t go well, you know, you have to be very patient, but you also have to be strict in some ways so that you can create that healthy environment.
And I think that’s especially important for kids that, that healthy environment, because as adults, we’re, we kind of have a better understanding of like, Hey, I’m not going to take this shit. I’m going to walk out on this one. You know, like you can’t treat me like that. And it’s a lot harder for kids to understand and know where that point is.
So for adults, of course, you’re going to be looking for those things. Yeah,
Richard Matthews: have one more question for you that I think is just right in line with
Master Victor: I think that pretty much covers it.
Richard Matthews: Yeah. Is my audio coming through? I’m not sure my audio is coming through. Okay. I said, I have one more question and it’s just
Master Victor: Yeah, it’s coming.
Richard Matthews: to to seek out one on one training versus [01:19:00] group training, right? Because a lot of what we’ve talked about so far is like, you know, you’re looking at a school in a class setting and then like you and I are doing one on one training, whereas it’s really one on two because we’re doing my son and I at the same time which is more individualized attention.
And I know for me specifically, I was looking for that because I’m looking for, like, peak performance for my business and other things and just have benefits outside of You know, we got a whole episode talking about the benefits outside of martial arts, but if someone who’s looking to get into martial arts when would you sort of make the recommendation to look into group training versus in one on one training, and is it ever a smart, you know, a smarter decision to start with a group training versus versus one on one training?
Like, what are your thoughts on that? Just as sort of like a final thing for finding your master to train with.
Master Victor: Yeah, often this comes down to just affordability. I mean, I think that one on one training is a hundred times better than a class because you’re getting more attention. The only thing that you’re not going to get in private training as you get [01:20:00] in a class is you’re going to have more people to spar during on sparring day, and you’re going to have other people to kind of bounce what you’re learning off of a little bit easier, but I’ve seen much further growth from private lesson students than from group lesson students.
And that’s just because you can give them more attention. If you can and can afford and have the time to do private lessons, I always recommend private lessons. So, oftentimes it becomes a matter of just affordability because you’re, you have to normally pay a higher rate for the private lessons where the rate is significantly reduced for the group lessons.
I mean, this should be pretty obvious, but you know, it takes, you can fit a lot more kids in a room and then that person’s only working one hour versus. You know, having it focused on, you know, one or two people. And I would say that, you know, if you’re looking, if you get to a point where in your training, [01:21:00] you want to make further development, you have the time, you have the means to do it.
Seek out personal, you know, one on one training, because it’s going to take you to that other level of refinement. You’re going to have A microscope on your technique, which is extremely important. Like when I’m training myself, I have a microscope on every part of my body. I know if my hip is off, I know if my foot is off and I have developed that in myself from having my senior master, my grandmaster explained to me what I should be doing in those techniques.
Right. And that has developed my own personal self awareness. So when you’re in a big class, you might not be getting that. You might get the teacher walking around and they might come to you once or twice throughout the whole class. And they may say, Hey, you need to pivot this foot. You need to bring this knee forward.
And that might be the only advice you get the whole class. And the rest is just you, they’re practicing and they might be like, hands up a few times. So you might get a lot more out of the [01:22:00] private lesson than you do out of the group lesson. There’s also the aspect of like. Kids oftentimes do better in group lessons, not only because of the attention span, but they have their peers who can help them learn how to behave and how to act during the class.
Like if you have a whole bunch of people standing still, it’s going to be a lot easier for them to stand still than if they’re there by themselves. Right? So you have this kind of positive reinforcement aspect from a group lesson, that approach of it. I prefer to teach adults or more advanced students one on one because of that.
But I have done kids at a earlier level, one on one, it just becomes a little bit different of an environment. So I usually suggest, you know, if you’re starting off your kids, like four or five, six, all the way up to 10 years old, maybe have them go try a group lesson. If they are, you know, starting to. Go [01:23:00] to different competitions.
Maybe they’re a higher advanced bell, red bell, black belt, you know, look for the private lesson. They’re going to get so much benefit out of that. They’re going to get, you know, that microscope that they may be need in order to get them to that further level. Or, you know, especially adults, I highly recommend private lessons because then you’re going to get more attention on the details that.
Adults are a little bit better at putting that focus in that effort. Although kids can often learn faster. It takes them a little bit to learn the whole discipline side of the martial arts too.
Richard Matthews: Yeah, and I know, like, for me, personally the speed of response is um, it’s, it’s And the results is that part where, like, I’m, you know, I have the the financial wherewithal because I’m doing it as, like, a part of our business and to help, you know, impact our bottom line and that kind of stuff.
But, you know, I also have, like. I’m not young anymore, so I would like to learn all these things as soon as possible and get myself to where I want to go as soon as possible, so for [01:24:00] me, that decision was like, hey, I want to have one on one training, and I’m willing to invest in that, and so, you know, hopefully if people are thinking through that, you know, those are just some of the decision points that you might be looking at.
Master Victor: Yeah. And another aspect would be like, you know, we both travel. So, you know, at this moment in time, I can’t be at a school, physical location, 12 months out of the year, you know, so that, that makes it a little bit difficult. And, you know, for the people who are traveling, they may only have the ability to do one on one online training.
There’s not many schools that do group online trainings just because it becomes very difficult to manage and see a whole bunch of people you know. Performing on online. Now, I know Gracie Gracie Brazilian jiu jitsu. They have an online course where you follow the program and you submit a video of you doing whatever technique they’re showing on video and you submit it back to them and [01:25:00] they basically certify that you know that technique.
We don’t, I personally don’t do that. Although I will be creating. Small videos on different techniques, exercises that you can do at home. I don’t see that as a potential path to take because in between learning that there’s a lot of pitfalls that in feedback that is required in a stand up fighting that maybe you don’t get from a video and that maybe not everybody has that awareness to do specific things on their own, they require more input.
Richard Matthews: Yeah, I would definitely agree with that. Um,
Master Victor: I feel like that’s a good.
Richard Matthews: yeah, having a coach is just so much better. So much better.
Master Victor: Yeah. I feel like that’s a good stopping place for today. We pretty much, you know, covered, you know, how to get from the novice to that advanced stage of development in martial arts, how, no matter how long you’ve been training, I don’t care if you’re 10 or 80 years old, it’s a [01:26:00] lifelong learning. It’s a continuous development and.
No, you know, we are always refining, otherwise we’re gonna start to rescind on our skills and how important it is to train other aspects of the martial arts so that you can improve the mastery of the martial arts in itself and, you know, training other things. We can always bring those things back to our actual martial arts training and how martial arts transforms our physical, our mental selves, and how incorporating tradition.
With innovation can help us get to a new place and transform the world of martial arts, because again, the goal is always to spread peace and become the warrior inside so that we don’t have to become the warrior out outside, but we’re always ready to defend ourselves. Cause that’s the whole point. And you can check us out on fairacademy.
com slash you make sure to like subscribe and we will see you all for the next episode.
[01:27:00]
