A great benefit of embracing challenge has been lots and lots of failure, especially in martial arts. The first time I ever sparred I had grandiose ideas about how I would utilize my carefully honed techniques. Twenty awkward and painful minutes later, I was sweating, breathing heavily, and complaining to my senior classmates that nothing I did seemed to work. They gave me pep talks. They smiled and said things like: “you should’ve seen me the first time I sparred. I was terrible!” And: “Stick with it and don’t get discouraged. Don’t expect to be great right away. Listen to critiques of what you’re doing wrong, and just try to improve a little bit every day.”

I listened to them, and I tried and failed, and tried and failed, and tried and failed. And, slowly, I learned from my failures and I improved. A few years later, I was the senior student. When I fought newcomers and they came up to me after class, frustrated, and said that nothing they did seemed to work, I smiled and told them: “you should’ve seen me the first time I sparred. I was terrible.”

Through that process, I learned a third lesson from martial arts: to accept and learn from failure. No technique looks good the first time someone attempts it. It takes hours and hours of repetition, adjustment, and experimentation to master even the most basic skill. It takes even more time to properly put a skill into practice. It took me eight months of trying before I threw my first opponent in Judo sparring. In boxing, I got punched in the face hundreds of times before I learned how to block and avoid (some) strikes. I still constantly leave myself open for takedowns in mixed martial arts. But every time I fail, I learn something, and the next time I try I’m better equipped for success. Martial arts taught me that If I fail enough and fail productively, eventually I will succeed.

The fourth lesson martial arts taught me was that personal growth and learning are best achieved by leaving the comfort zone. My first martial arts teacher used an adept metaphor. He described a caterpillar in a cocoon. The cocoon is safe and warm, and the world outside of it is scary. And some caterpillars think: “I just want to stay here, where it’s comfortable.” But to become a butterfly, the caterpillar must be brave: to emerge from the cocoon and boldly go out into the world. Only by leaving its comfort zone can it reach its potential. In martial arts, this means testing techniques and strategies in uncomfortable and intimidating situations. It means not just practicing skills, but also putting skills into practice. There's an adage in boxing that "pads don't hit back:” meaning that drilling techniques is not the same as applying them against an actual opponent. To be the best martial artist I can be, I needed to test my skills against national champions and Olympians. I had to fight people much larger and stronger than I was. I had to try styles that I didn’t know or understand, and to get beat up by people who did. I had to spar two or three people at once, and to develop methods to deal with those situations. When something didn’t work, I’d get punched in the face or kicked or thrown to the ground or choked: all of which were excellent motivators to iterate something new. But to get to that point I had to first I leave the comfort zone of what I was already good at and what I thought I knew.

When I started teaching, I used all of these lessons to inform my approach. I did everything I could to make my classes engaging, and to avoid the passive, lecture-driven model of education that I grew up with. Whenever possible I gamified lessons, staged debates, and diversified course materials to include audio and visual as well as textual sources. I calibrated my requirements to be difficult but not punishing: to challenge students to succeed while simultaneously allowing them to fail without harsh repercussions. I asked them to try new and unfamiliar approaches, and to test those approaches practice. I found that the things that helped me learn helped others learn as well. Not everything I tried worked, and not every lesson was a winner. But a lot of it did, and I was better at reaching students for the attempt.

Education is not only a means of training skills and knowledge, but also as a process of becoming. It’s about being the person we want to be, and being a positive influence on our community. To become, we must push our limits. We must try new things, and discover our passions. We must fail repeatedly in service of a greater goal, and to use those failures productively. We must get punched in the face: preferably in the metaphorical sense. And we must use that experience to learn. Martial arts taught me that, and I hope I can pass it on.

By Jonathan Clemens, Mouse Learning Network Manager