What Martial Arts Taught Me About Education

Getting hit in the face taught me a good deal about learning and teaching.
The above statement may sound counter-intuitive, but joining a simple martial arts class taught me a number of unique ways to absorb and pass on information. I’ve used these teaching and learning methodologies inside and outside of the martial arts world and in many ways they seem universal across disciplines.
I’d joined martial arts for a few reasons when I was in my early 20’s. First, the neighborhood I worked in was dangerous — learning self defense wasn’t a bad idea. Second, weight lifting was beating up my body, so I needed another way to exercise before I grounded my joints into powder. I found a local Krav Maga class in the general area and decided to check it out. I knew nothing about this martial art in general. I was just told you didn’t need any kind of physical coordination to practice it — I was sold just by that alone.
The instructor, Alan Feldman, immediately caught your attention. Saying he was physically gifted was a true understatement. One of my friends described his movements as akin to a Japanese Anime character. Sometimes you would lose track of what you were doing and just find yourself watching him. His movements were graceful and fluid — at the same time he could unleash a violent attack out of nowhere. He was truly a master of the art he taught.
As I came to realize, however, his physical ability was his second greatest attribute. When you spent time in his class, you’d realize that Alan’s true gift was his ability to teach others. He has this way of teaching that made the system easy to learn. The way he would teach would also make it easy to transfer that knowledge to other people. In other words, Alan could turn his students into teachers relatively quickly by his method of teaching.
One Method For Many Problems
When Alan taught a class, something strange would happen many times. He would teach you one movement over the course of a class. However despite there being only one movement taught, he would teach a number of exercises. That one movement would become a defense for a number of different situations.
A way to throw a quick first punch would transform into a way to defend yourself against a gun or knife from a certain angle. A way to defend yourself against a stick or club would become a way to defend yourself against a high kick. Movements didn’t just exist in a vacuum. There wasn’t just a defense for a specific problem, there was a movement that could be a defense for multiple problems.
He did this frequently and in a masterful way — one movement would become a solution for many different things. This method simplified things dramatically. I didn’t have to learn 8 different defenses for 8 different problems, I just learned one. I was amazed at the way he’d manage to teach in this manner. I just assumed he would spend hours to plan out classes so they would work out this way. One day my friend Kevin asked Alan how he was able to plan classes this way. Alan seemed surprised by the question. His answer was something like, “I just do, there is no planning.”
Kevin and I were baffled by the answer. As I think about it more, I shouldn’t have been confused. Alan didn’t look at the martial art as a complex system. He saw the martial art as a simple system to deal with complex problems. He wasn’t there to be a magician and to make things seem mystical and complex. He was there to break everything into it’s simple pieces and make them relate-able. The beauty of the system he taught was it’s simplicity. He not only taught that in specific movements, but also in the method he would use to teach us the system.
Teaching in this manner made the system easy for a student to learn. Similarly, this method of teaching made it easy for a future teacher to learn how to train students. In the end, it would probably be a better business practice to only show one thing at a time in class. This would stretch out the material you have to teach and force students to spend more time and money in your class. That wasn’t the point of the system Alan taught though. The main point was to create better students and teachers, even if your wallet wasn’t as big as it could be.
Learn By Teaching
“When you’re a green belt, you’re a teacher whether you want to be or not.”
— Alan Feldman
Alan would say the above statement frequently in class. I remember almost laughing the first time I heard him say this. When I first started the class, I would trip over my own feet. I thought to myself, “This guy is crazy if he thinks I could ever teach!” In my limited thinking though, I missed something. As I was training, learning, and advancing in belt level, I was picking up skills I would be able to pass on to others.
I ended up learning that one of the best ways to truly know something was to teach that thing to another person. I may be able to perform an exercise myself, but did I really know it well enough to explain it. Could I not only explain it, but break it down and explain every detail of a movement to a novice? If I could teach an exercise and make it understandable, I could say I completely mastered it.
As I spent more time in class, Alan would pull all of us up in front of the room and have us explain things to the class. I won’t lie, this could be embarrassing at points — especially when you got caught thinking you knew more than you actually did. Standing in front of a crowd and stammering because you couldn’t explain something has a way of making you realize you have much more to learn. You would immediately know how well you knew something when Alan would do this to you. I guess this was a way for Alan to realize how far you were progressing as well.
Time Creates Mastery But Mastery Is Just The Beginning

One day Alan explained how the idea of a belt system was created in martial arts. Originally everyone who trained wore a simple uniform tied with a white belt. One would be able to walk into a class and know who had been training the longest by just looking at an individual’s belt. The person who had spent a great deal of time training had accumulated years of sweat on their belt. Eventually their belt began getting darker as they trained more and more. The people in the school that trained the longest had black belts. As those black belts trained even longer, the belt would eventually begin to wear down and become white again.
This nice origination story has a purpose. This was Alan’s way of telling us that mastery could only be developed by time in class and practice. There were no quick short cuts to become a master — this would be a long path of effort and continuous training. The story also taught us that once you achieved a level of mastery, you should always keep learning.
This is a common theme in martial arts in general. You’ll often see a practitioner in one form of martial art achieve a black belt, then train in another form and start over from the beginning. Even the biggest names in martial arts have done this over the years. Famously Chuck Norris started from scratch in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu to achieve a black belt in that new skill.
Plus, Minus, Equal
In Ryan Holiday’s book Ego Is The Enemy, he describes a principle called Plus, Minus, Equal. Ryan learned of this idea from MMA legend Frank Shamrock. In this theory one searches for a plus. This plus is someone who knows more than you in your field of study and who can teach and mentor you. You would also search for an equal. An equal is someone on your level who you can compete with. This person will be a training partner and adversary who will make you better. Finally, you would also search out a minus. A minus is someone who is below your level, who you can teach and mentor.
I thought this concept was a wonderful way to progress in any field of study. However as I thought about it, I realized Alan was teaching us in this manner all the time. Alan’s classes were not broken up into advanced or beginner classes. Everyone was thrown into a room together, all skill levels worked together. Even on your first day you may end up learning something advanced. Your random training partner may be advanced, equal, or below your level. Alan’s rule about teaching at green belt also forced us to work with a minus and teach them to improve. The mixture of classes also ensured you would also eventually work with equals as well, where you could test your skill on someone at your own level.
Never Lose Focus On What You’re Teaching / Learning And Why
Alan did many different things in class. There was an aspect of fitness (I learned to jump rope in his classes) and there was also fun. However, Alan never lost track of the purpose for the classes and the martial art. It’s purpose was to save your life and defend yourself and loved ones from harm. You may lose 20 lbs in class and come out of your shell while teaching in front of the room, but that was just a byproduct. The reason were in the class was to learn how to protect yourself and those around you.
Alan would always emphasize that the movement you were doing was to cause pain or escape from a particular situation. He would also place us in real world situations where we would face attacks of the nature we would see on the street. We defended ourselves against weapons we may encounter in our own personal worlds as well. Alan also had us wear sneakers and clothing that was very much like what we would wear when we were normally out and about.
Alan also never got involved in the daily politics of our particular martial art. There was always lots of in-fighting and various schools didn’t get along. However, Alan was like Switzerland in the middle of a world war. Alan was friends with everyone and was welcome everywhere he went. His main goal was to pass on his knowledge and become a better martial artist —he wasn’t trying to win an argument.
Use Common Simple Images and Props To Explain The Complex
Alan has interesting ways to explain the movements he would teach us. If he showed us how to blade our body and reach, he would use the metaphor of a monkey reaching through a cage at the zoo to grab a banana. When teaching us the proper way to fall, he would demonstrate spreading the concussion across your body mass by dropping a book on the floor. When teaching us gun defenses, he would use a flash light to demonstrate the path a bullet may take. You immediately understood you were doing it wrong if that light stayed on your body too long. He also described the movement of a hook punch like the way a witch would stir her brew in a cauldron. All of these simple images and props Alan used made learning things so much easier. These props and metaphors also made teaching things to others much easier as well.
Conclusion
All of the things Alan taught us in class gave me an advantage when it came to learning and teaching martial arts. However, the lessons he taught me also gave me a way to improve my teaching and learning skills in general for any subject.
- ) Don’t just teach solutions to problems, combine things in a way where one solution can solve multiple problems where possible.
- )Learn a subject by teaching it to others. By explaining something to others, you’ll gain a deeper understanding of what you’re trying to learn.
- )Spend time to gain mastery of a subject, but once it’s mastered, look for other things to learn. As you continue to learn, you’ll continue to grow.
- )Surround yourself with people of various levels of expertise in your discipline. Learn from those who are better, struggle with those at your level, and teach those below you.
- )Keep your mind focused on what you’re teaching and learning. Don’t forget the purpose of your discipline. It’s easy to get lost in the minutia of things that surround the purpose, but keep focused on the main goal of what you’re learning or teaching.
- )Use common language or examples for what you’re learning or teaching. Having a familiar reference present can make the complex a good deal easier to understand.
I’d like to thank Alan Feldman for his patience and years teaching me. I’d also like to thank Kevin Mack for taking these videos and pictures. I was never forward thinking enough to save any of these memories to film.
Thank you for reading my ramblings. If this story makes you happy and you know it, clap your hands.
