Welcome to Episode #120 of the Fight for a Happy Life podcast, “Use It or Lose It.”

Some people say martial arts is like riding a bike… I don’t! I say use it or lose it!

The fact is that no matter how hard you train, you can’t practice everything all the time, which means some skills will always end up being neglected. But wait—the situation is worse than you think.

Unfortunately, a lack of time is not the only reason you will see your hard-earned skills slipping away… not by a long shot!

So, consider this your wake-up call. In this episode, I’ll break down the three major reasons (and a few minor ones) our capabilities get rusty. But I’m warning you in advance—you can’t always stop the corrosion and rot.

Put simply, life is a losing game! Whoa. That sounds bleak, doesn’t it?

Don’t worry—along with the bad news, I’ve also got a four-step formula to help you hold on to your skills for as long as possible. So, don’t give up yet!

To LISTEN to “Use It or Lose It,” here’s a link.

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To WATCH the video version or READ the transcript, scroll down below.

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Thanks for listening! Keep fighting for a happy life!

Use It or Lose It – A Martial Arts Warning

Here’s the video. If the player doesn’t work, click this direct link.

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As always, if you’d like to keep the conversation going, feel free to leave a comment here or through my Contact Page.

TRANSCRIPT

Howdy, Ando here from Happy Life Martial Arts. Welcome to episode #120 of Fight for a Happy Life, the show that believes even a little martial arts makes life a whole lot better.

Happy to be back after a little bit of a break. In case you didn’t know, this is the 10th anniversary of the podcast. I’ve been doing one episode a month for the last 10 years.

So I took a little break just to feel it out and make sure I still felt like yammering on camera. As it turns out, I still love the sound of my own voice, so I’ll be keeping it going for a while.

Also during my time off, I did a little work on an online course, a new course called Martial Arts Over 50. So if you’re getting older and you either took a break from your training or you feel like you’re not getting as much out of your training as you used to, take a look at this course.

It might help as you get into your older years to get the most out of your training as possible. I’ll put a link below. But today, the topic, losing.

I’ve got a warning for you. You are losing skills every day. But do you know which ones?

You work hard, you train hard, you study hard. You may have skills at a world class level. But the fact is, you’re losing something all the time.

If you’re working on this, that means you’re not working on that. No matter how much time and energy you put into one area of your training, that means you’re neglecting a different area of your training.

It’s not always your fault. There are many different factors that go into what you’re gaining and what you’re losing. And that’s what I want to look at today. Let’s figure out how to maximize our capabilities moving forward and stop losing the skills that are the most important to us.

Now let’s start off by breaking down what I think are the three ways that we lose skill. One, life changes. Two, your body changes. And three, your focus changes.

Let’s break these down. Starting off with life. This category is mostly not your fault. Most of these factors you had no responsibility for, it’s just life.

So for instance, maybe money. Maybe you lost your job. Maybe you had to use your money for medical bills or to help out a family member or a friend and suddenly you just don’t have the money to go to class or to take those private lessons or to fly and take that seminar.

Maybe it was time. Maybe you used to have a lot more time when you were back in college or in your 20s, but now you have a family. You have a child and another child. Maybe you have to take on a second job. Time can slip away and now you have less for training.

Maybe it’s the location. Maybe you had to move for your job or to take care of a sick family member and you’re just not in the same town where your old school was. Maybe the school changed locations or the school closed down and now you’re without your training group.

Maybe your teacher passed away. Maybe your favorite training partner moved away or passed away.

All of these things are not your fault. Life happens and hopefully our training has equipped us to do the best we can in these circumstances. But no matter how you cut it, your training changes every time one of those factors is changed.

So most recently, you could probably all relate, the lockdown. I wasn’t responsible for that. But definitely that was a major change to my training routine.

Suddenly only training alone. Solo training only. No partner practice for over a year. That was unthinkable. I had never imagined something like that could happen. And yet there it was.

So in the beginning, it was shocking. And then in a way, it turned into a blessing. Because it forced me to change my perspective on how I was training. It forced me to shake up my priorities and take a good look at how I was spending my time to really figure out if I was using it the best way I could.

We can all fall into a routine that becomes a rut-teen. You’re in a rut. It could be a good rut, but often it’s a bad rut. If you haven’t updated it in several years, I think it’s a great idea to take a look at it. And the lockdown forced me to take a look at it.

I’ve always said that martial arts is really two projects. There’s time spent on developing yourself, and then there’s the time spent developing yourself with another person. Or two or three.

Self-defense is ultimately a relationship. How you manage other people, there’s two sides to that. There’s you and then there’s them and you’re together.

So the lockdown took my focus off of how to control other people and brought it back to how to control myself, my body, my thoughts, my feelings, my strategies. What can I make better? I had to ask.

What have I been neglecting? What skills am I not maximizing? What skills have I lost?

And that led to a whole new training routine. And when it was all done, when the lockdown was over, I found I was in better shape than ever. I also found that my mechanics were better.

I think I had better balance, better weight shifting, my strikes had more impact. I just felt better.

And my breathing, my coordination with my breathing and my mindset, all of it I thought had been polished to a higher degree. So I was grateful for that. But there were losses. Some things I didn’t expect.

I didn’t expect the timing in my sparring to be off because I was visualizing when I’m hitting stuff, I always visualize shadow boxing. But people are different and different people are different.

So there’s always a slightly different space-time continuum to deal with. And so getting back in the groove of reading body language and setting myself in positions where I need to be, that took a little time to sharpen back up. I didn’t expect that as much.

A big surprise was pain tolerance. I’d lost a bit of my pain tolerance. When I wasn’t getting tapped out or choked out or hit all the time.

When I came back and had partners again and felt that pressure and impact, yeah, there was a little bit of an ow factor. Like, ugh, that’s uncomfortable. So I had to catch up on that again, getting back