"Practice makes perfect"- Anonymous
The second part of the mastery formula is dedicated to practice. I completely disagree with the notion that practice makes perfect.
I remember teaching martial arts classes and just before testing we would encourage the students to spend a portion of the time practicing their form. It was almost comical that small kids thought swinging their hands wildly while moving their hands and feet very fast was practicing. Maybe they were practicing the correct form but their practice was poor.
The idea that practice make perfect can also be argued against based on the notion that maybe what you are practicing is actually wrong. Continuing with the small kids example, they would practice and practice a wrong move inside their form without noticing it. They were in a sense practicing the wrong thing and getting better at it.
Combing these ideas would wrongly lead one to believe that if one practices the wright things then they would develop mastery.
Today's question is:
"How do you get better at practicing the right things?"
In a future post I will explore the idea of practice in more detail.
You taught Martial Arts? WOW what are you, a Robot? where do you find time to learn all these different things... to end up teaching them?
ReplyDeleteOh.. and you get better at practising the right things by having an instructor/master guide you through your practice...
ReplyDeleteWould you be my instructor? Sensie? lol