Who Succeeds in the Martial Arts?

Martial arts instructors have noticed that the most talented students often don't stay very long. If a person comes in who can do a reasonable imitation of all the basic kicks and punches in one class, learns Pinan Shodan in the next class, and goes and wins their first sparring match in the next class, most instructors figure they'll be gone before blue belt.

This seems backwards, right? Generally people that are good at something enjoy it, and shouldn't less effort mean more enjoyment?

My take on it is that most of these very talented individuals don't value what they are learning. It's the difficulty of the process that makes the rest of us so attached to our practice.

But if it's not the most talented students that usually stick around, who is it?

In my opinion, the majority of successful martial arts students have three traits:

1) Persistence -- they don't quit because they don't like to quit. When they aren't able to do something the first time, they practice it again and again and again and . . .

2) Emphasis on 'the right way' -- they believe that there is a right and a wrong way to do things, or at least that doing things the right way is easier and more efficient

3) Comfort with a social hierarchy -- they enjoy or are at least comfortable with the belt structure being a visible indicator of who is in charge of whom

Each of these traits give people who have them huge advantages in the first 3 - 5 years of martial arts training. But after that (which you might notice is generally after black belt status is achieved) they can become limiting.

Persistence becomes stubbornness and can prevent us from understanding new methods for training. Emphasis on the right way turns into 'the way I was taught must be right.' Comfort with the hierarchy becomes "I'm a big man on campus in my black belt" and leads to sloppy training.

It can be hard to see when behaviors that used to be very helpful to ourselves become roadblocks. And it can be even harder for an instructor 'pointing the way' for others to remember that behaviors that aren't good for the instructor might still be good for the less experienced martial artist.