Martial Arts Helps Develop Leadership? That’s What We’re Told …
The martial arts “industry” of professional instructors (of which I guess I’m a part by default) has been trying its hardest to convince moms and dads around the world that their kids will benefit from martial arts in ways other than fighting and self defense.
At my Dojo, we have a “Leadership Program” that actually takes time to talk about important personal and moral issues, and how our inherently violent training can be put to acceptable use. We ask some deep questions about why we train, to help counterbalance and better understand how we train.
However, there is still plenty of doubt: punching and kicking certainly doesn’t seem like a very good way to learn about leadership skills in the modern day, in which (I hope) we’re moving away from violence and towards a harmonious future as a species on the planet. This has become one of those things that just seems so disingenuous to most people, so used-car-salesman type of thing to say. Imagine: “Mrs Jones, little Bobby will learn to be a caring leader among his peers … Now punch that pad harder, Bobby! An enemy deserves no mercy!” etc. That’s how most of the world MUST imagine this discussion going.
Here’s why martial arts helps:
In Dr Stuart Brown’s book, Play: How it Shapes the Brain
First, it’s obviously important to recognize the signs of people wanting to have fun and enjoy what you’re doing. If everything seems like a challenge (especially a violent challenge), then you’ll be too distracted to get anything done. This is one very simple way in which we can learn through martial arts the experiential difference between fun aggression and dangerous aggression. There just aren’t too many safe outlets for experiencing violence, so martial arts begins to fill that gap better than anything else!
Martial arts is a great opportunity to experiment with some danger without becoming truly violent. We can immediately understand, through socially acceptable “training” that some things are ok, and others are not. This is important, according to Dr. Brown:
I studied murderers in Texas prisons and found that the absence of play in their childhood was as important as any other single factor in predicting their crimes. On the other end, I also documented abused kids at risk for antisocial behavior whose predilection for violence was diminished through play.
While there must be some actual science involved in this discussion (coming up!) we should also take a look at some more anecdotal yet obvious arguments, too: animals (even wild animals) play a LOT, but they certainly have a 24/7 need for being careful and alert. Heck, we see animals even do things that are inherently dangerous as play!
Bears wrestle for fun, goats jump around on high cliffs, just about every animal plays a variety of “chase the siblings” – yet none of this helps them immediately gather food or avoid becoming food. We know, though, that they’re never discouraged by their parents. Can you imagine telling your mom and dad you were going to go wrestle a bear or jump around on a cliff?! I know they’re better at it, but you get the idea – they’re playing!
So, let’s face the obvious: for this kind of pseudo-violent play to exist within so many species for so long, there MUST be some actual value. Otherwise, natural selection would have weeded it out long ago. But that’s still guess-science. Here’s some better stuff.
A neuroscientist, Sergio Pellis, and biologist, John Nelson, in Australia:
measured brain-size and tabulated play behavior in fifteen species of mammals that ranged from dogs to dolphins. The found that when they made allowances for differing body size, the species with larger brains (compared with body size) played a lot and the species with smaller brains played less.
Another researcher, Jaak Panksepp:
has shown that active play selectively stimulates brain-derived neurotrophic factor (which stimulates nerve growth) in the amygdala (where emotions get processed) and the dorolateral prefontal cortex (where executive decisions are processed).
Warning:Not an excuse to only goof-off
In a post on the topic of Expertise, I pointed out the importance of guided, purpose-driven training. You can’t become an expert at any particular thing by goofing off in general. You DO need to find where you can improve, look for flaws, and go about the direct business of making those improvements and eradicating those technical flaws.
The athletic researchers for that series of books pointed out that such directed training is NOT inherently fun. Certainly, there seems to be some inherent fun to swing a sword around. However, there is no such default enjoyment to be found in doing hundreds of repetitions of the same cut, trying to make the grip loose and tight at the right moments, or having the sword tip and handle tip stop in exactly the right points, or finding the various timing options for the hips to rotate, or finding the perfect weight shift through each foot, etc. That’s hard work! It’s even dull and boring, when compared to swinging hard and jumping around like a monkey.
And THAT’S WHY MOST PEOPLE DON’T BECOME EXPERTS! They want to do the fun part only. Training has plenty of fun parts, so it’s easy to do them and still have challenge and variety. It’s even worse than that, too: you’ll enjoy the parts you’re good at, so you’ll have more fun doing those, and tend to avoid the parts that need work. But be careful to have enough directed training if you’re planning on reaching beyond average skills.
There is a LOT more to say here, and if you’re interested, I’d like to continue exploring this topic here. Let me know what you think. And, if you’re interested, buy a copy of Play by Dr. Brown
