Topic: General Martial Arts
Setting targets is one of the most effective tools that you can use to improve your martial arts skill. In order to make progress you need to have a clear idea in your mind of where you are going and how you will get there.
Of course many martial arts schools will have their own targets for students to aim at, in the form of grading systems, but to really give your training a boost you should go beyond this, particularly if you do any extra practice and training outside of classes. If your training is not focussed on specific goals then there is a risk that you will end up just going through the motions. Also, it is difficult to improve everything all at once. By setting very narrow and specific targets, over fairly short time scales (weeks, or a couple of months at most) you can be sure that you are continually making incremental gains in your training,, and that you are therefore always improving.
Even the act of sitting down and thionking about appropriate targets can intself be helpful, as it forces you to analyse you strengths and weaknesses, and to think about what you need to do to improve.
It is also the case that the intention which you hold in your mind during training defines what you will get out of it. There are many different things that martial arts can offer - health, fitness, mental strength, self-defense skill, sports fighting skill, and so on. Different people want different things, and a good school will cater to them all; but it is up to you to focus your training on what you yourself want to get out of it. It is possible for two people to study the same system, under the same instructor, and to come away from it with entirely different skills, abilities and benefits, according to their particular intention during training. In Chinese martial arts this kind of intention is called Yi. If you practice a technique with the intention of performing beautiful, perfect, and precise movments for form demonstrations, then that is what you will be best at, but if you practice the same technique with the intention of learning to defend yourself in the street, or of learning to beat opponents in full contact competition, then that is what you will end up being best at. Setting targets is a good way to focus your Yi andget what you want from your training.
