Time To Go Hunting

"The purpose of training is to tighten the slack, toughen the body, and polish the spirit."

-Morihei Ueshiba

"I'm constantly trying to find other people to better me, to improve. To move outside my comfort zone."

-Frank Mir

I am sure many who are reading this have found themselves in a similar predicament; they are someplace new and for awhile, and want to train, but have no one to do so with.

That's what is currently on my mind; I am in Israel, just outside of Tel Aviv on a kibbutz for a months, and though a major city is just forty minutes away, it may as well be out of reach. The community center in the kibbutz where some martial arts are practiced is currently shut for the summer, so I have to come up with different ways to do so.

Luckily this isn't my first time having to hunt for training partners, and there are some tried and true strategies to find them.

The easiest and ironically at times more difficult way to find a training partner is by talking with others. Find a way to bring up you practice martial arts, and boom, you may have found a training partner. The problems with this method is that it can take time, but also it means that who you may get as a training partner is limited literally by those around you. Sometimes word of mouth gets you that golden person who can help you reach new levels, but I've seen this happen rarely.

Another means is through the internet. There are always forums and hot spots online to meet and coordinate for finding a training partner. I prefer this method most because it allows you to hunt when its best for your schedule, and you can be more selective. You do TKD and want to train with someone who does kyokushin or Muai Thai? This is the route to go.

A way that I have found that works is to start a martial arts club of some kind. The only problem really with this is that if your club has a theme, such as kung fu, or boxing, that is in all likelihood all you are going to get to train with. I prefer mixing it up; I want to spar people from styles I have never even heard of to push myself, so when I assisted founding the NVCC Martial Arts club, it was open to all styles. At any one session we might have a few TKD people, of different styles, to Wing Chun, Silat, Shotokan and more present.

And then there is the long way; find someone who just wants to learn martial arts at all and practice with them until they become a martial artist who can help push you forward. The teacher teaches the student the path, walking ahead, until the student can not only walk with their teaching side by side on the path, but can even run forward, and come back with word of whats ahead.

That's perhaps the greatest way to find a training partner in terms of it having a meaningful and even spiritual context. The only problem is it can take time.

While it is true you can practice by yourself, as Miyamoto wrote in the Book Of Five Rings;

"As one man can defeat ten men, so can one thousand men defeat ten thousand. However, you can become a master of strategy by training alone with a sword, so that you can understand the enemy's stratagems, his strength and resources, and come to appreciate how to apply strategy to beat ten thousand enemies."

-The Fire Book

I prefer to do so with others. They push me harder than I can myself, because I know myself completely. They will think of things I cannot, and use them, and probably succeed until I can come up with my own means to respond and manage their actions.

A training partner is someone who will push to become more than you are. Toward what you can become. Friends can be training partners, but this is usually a bad idea. Your friendship and camaraderie may distract you from actual work which is why you are present together in the first place.

They do not have to better than you. Such a thing is unfeasible. Perhaps they are far faster than you, while at the same time you can kick higher than they can. The point is with their help you can become faster. They can learn to kick higher. It's a mutual exchange. There is no way to find someone who is overall objectively better than you, pragmatically. That's all in a person's judgemental and self-doubting head. And if you go into the relationship of having a training partner thinking they are better, or worse, that you are better, than it will eventually fall apart and you will be without a person to work to become better in the martial arts with.

"The secret of change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old, 

but on building the new."

-Socrates.


For the blog concerning my adventures in Israel, see: ajourneyinisrael.blogspot.com/