Whether you want to master Karate, Master Kung Fu, Master Aikido, or any other art, the fair question is…how long is it going to take? I am going to tell you the answer, but it may not be what people want to hear in this fast food society. For the serious practitioner it does take a while to master the martial arts.
The common wisdom handed down to this author when he was trying to become karate master, and this was prior to the establishment of such organizations as the World TaeKwonDo Federation or the Kenpo Karate Association, and their official ‘rules’ on such subjects, was that it took three lifetimes. Apparently this concept had been passed down from shaolin kung fu monks. Glad to say, the rule is not ironclad.
Now, whether you are studying goju ryu karate, or James Mitose Kenpo, or some other type of art, the real facts are that you have to repeat a form one thousand times if you are going to master kata. In this writer’s experience, the rule holds true, and this whether you are trying to master tae kwon do, or master martial arts in whole. Simply, you don’t know a form until you have done it a thousand times, and…there are some who hold to a ten thousand rule, which we will get back to in a moment.
To Master Karate is one thing, but what if your art isn’t form oriented? What if you are trying to master aikido self defense? What if you are trying to master kenpo self defense, as put out by various kenpo karate association?
If you are trying to master only techniques, then you have to repeat the techniques a thousand times. If you have 500 techniques in your system, then you have to do 500 times 1000, or 500,000 repetitions of techniques. If you can do 5 techniques a minute, this comes out to 100,000 minutes, or 1667 hours of techniques.
1667 hours of techniques, divided by the number of years you wish to take to master kempo karate (without forms), or aikido martial arts, or any other ‘formless’ martial arts, will tell you how many hours you have to work in a year…or a day. If you were to do martial arts techniques for an hour a day it would take you nearly 5 years. You have to be quite serious in your practice.
To return to form based arts, which will give you time to shadow techniques through the forms, you should be able to master the art faster. If you practice 15 forms, and it takes a minute to do a form, it will take you 15,000 minutes to master your art. Of course, what if the 10,000 times holds for all your forms, as long as you practice a fair amount of form related techniques at the same time?
Considering the last statement, form based arts, including Ed Parker Kenpo and Wado Ryu Karate, need only take 10,000 minutes divided by 60, and you can master martial art within 166 hours, or three years at an hour a week. Nah. You’re going to have to do 15,000 reps of forms, equal time for the applications, and equal time for the freestyle…that’s the only way to be sure that you are going to master Karate.
Monster Martial Arts has over 15 courses on a variety of arts. These are complete arts, all the forms and techniques and methods of freestyle. Pick up a free ebook while your’re there.
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