Old is New Again by Dennis Schaefer

Master Matt Pasquinilli and I were evaluating our adult Taekwondo program and one of the issues we discussed was how to integrate modern wants and needs into the traditional martial arts study. Matt noted that “in the old days” when he started, there were mostly teen and adult males and they trained for multiple hours on multiple days of the week. It was a huge commitment of time and effort to get to the Black Belt level and that had been the tradition from the beginning.
The time and commitment required to maintain a strictly traditional program would preclude a lot of potential adult students these days. There is so much focus on multi-tasking, on finding the quickest, most convenient way, on the staggering number of options for exercise and fitness. Our mission is to find the balance between maintaining the integrity of tradition and acknowledging the realities of everyday contemporary life.
From the traditional side come the history, culture and mystique of the martial arts. Martial arts were originally developed for practical reasons: resisting oppression, defense of property and family, making the most of whatever was available. There was honor among the practitioners and the sacrifice it took to become a Master was seen as a necessary initiation. For the serious martial artist those traditions, in some form, should and do remain.
Now to the present day. We compete with work time, family time and leisure time to find reasons for adult students to start their martial arts journey. The benefits we offer are self-defense skills, the confidence and knowledge that come with being physically, mentally, and emotionally fit, and the satisfaction that comes with accomplishing goals that are sometimes difficult to pursue in our modern culture. Who couldn’t use some boxing skills; some additional self-esteem and a wicked round house kick to deal with the crush of modern existence?
Martial arts are a link with the rich tradition of the past, but they are also a way to find a new path, one you perhaps had not considered.

Dennis Schaefer is an Instructor at the asian Arts Center Taekwondo School in Dayton, Ohio
www.aacdayton.com