Panic Button

By Julius Anastasio
Julius Anastasio is a Green Belt at Wu Dao


<-I had a bit too much time on my hands this morning, can you tell?

So. There are only 3 days left until the tournament. I wish I could say that I’ve been feeling excited and fearless and rearing to go, but for the past week I’ve been feeling more restless and nervous than anything else.

Last Saturday Shi-Fu video-taped us doing our forms so we could see how we’ve progressed. Good GRIEF everything looked off. Video-taping yourself can certainly be a cruel, abrupt wake-up call for your ego. I made the mistake of watching myself on video a few too many times, mercilessly pausing the video and cringing at every mis-step, bad stance and flimsy arm position along the way.

For about 18 hours I went into crisis mode, stressed and worried about how my form would look at the competition. I picked apart every little mistake I was making, how high I was in my stances, how little intent and power I looked like I had, etc, etc. It didn’t help knowing that there was no real way that my form or technique could improve with less than a week before the tournament. As the expression goes, the hay’s in the barn.

Then I thought back about why I decided to start competing in the first place. The worry and self-conscious critique melted away. I had forgotten that the tournament was simply a useful goal to help inspire me into train harder and bring my training to a different level. The overall outcome, while hopefully good, wasn’t the reason I got started doing this. I didn’t go into training for this tournament thinking I would turn out to be a legendary Shaolin warrior in three months’ time. I went into it thinking that I would give it the best I had, train as hard as I could, and see what the result would be on me as a martial artist. The fact that I can so effectively critique faults and errors in my movements during and after I do them says something very positive about my current level of training.

I’m going into this Saturday with a clear and tranquil mind, with the knowledge that I will come out with a whole plethora of things to focus on in my training.