7 Ways to Improve Your Motivation for Training

At some point during your training you will hit a wall. You might reach black belt and think there’s no where left to go, you might hit a wall mid-grade and feel like you can’t improve further, or you might just get bored with your training and feel like you don’t want to go on.

Here are our tips on how to get over the bump and become the martial artist you want to be.

Talk to Your Instructor

Your instructor has been there and done it all. You know this because they’ve reached the level you are striving for, so in their own training at least they have hit many walls. They’ve probably also helped many students through similar hurdles.

Tell them about the problems you are having with training. A good instructor won’t hold it against you or take it personally, they will help you through and design bespoke training to help reinvigorate you.

Take a Break

Take a few weeks off training. Hit the gym instead, go abroad, or just spend a few weeks at home in front of Netflix. Let your body and your mind reset, so when you do restart you’ll hopefully feel fresh and ready to train harder than ever.

Train Even Harder Through It

If you’re particularly strong willed, you can get through your lack of motivation by training even harder. Go more times a week to the gym or to class. You’ll see improvements faster, which might help elevate your motivation worries.

Be Inspired By Your Heroes

Who has inspired you? Which famous person has led a life that you wish you had? Learn their journey. Read their books, watch their films, follow them on social media, find YouTube videos of them – learn what drove them to achieve the greatness you admire.

Once you’ve learnt what drives them, and what methods they use to achieve what they’ve achieved, use that to drive you on.

Quit

It might be that you’re training in the wrong art, and it takes a strong person to admit that the time and dedication they’ve put in to something wasn’t put in the right place.

There’s nothing wrong with admitting this – the key is to realise this and put your energy into the right thing. So if this is you, go out and find what you do want to do. Try as many new martial arts as you can, and find one that excites you again.

Create New Goals

When going through the ranks, goals are easy to see – usually a new belt, and attached to that new belt are techniques to learn and improve.

New goals when not a black belt could be to focus on your weakest area (kicking, grappling, fitness etc), so to learn how to beat that one person in class that you can never win against when sparring.

Once you’ve reached black belt this becomes a little harder, as you’ve learnt most techniques in your art, and you’re pretty good at all of them. Simply “get better” is a tough motivator when you’re that good already. You’ll have new grades to achieve, and you’ll still want to get one over your instructors in sparring, but you’ll need to be smarter to find the goals to suit you.

Instructors are even harder to motivate, as your techniques are already pretty perfect, and there isn’t much left on the syllabus to learn. You can always improve your techniques, but you should really focus on improving your teaching, and improving your students. If this isn’t enough, try new arts so you can teach new things and be an even better fighter, get even fitter (instructors can spend more time teaching than training), and focus on making your school even more successful.

Go To The Route of Your Art

This is a little expensive, but a good way to reconnect with your art is to go train where it came from (e.g. Jiu Jitsu in Japan, Kung Fu in China).

Getting back to where it came from is a great way to see your art from a different perspective. This writer has trained in Japan, China and Brazil in those country’s native arts, and can personally confirm that these experiences can be life changing for your training.