I had an interesting insight the other day in judo practice. Two of the older guys, both of whom had started with this club back when they were children, were working out with the rest of us and I was amazed at just how good they were. Mostly in the sense of having incredible ability to feel what the situation was (i.e. how their balance was, how the opponents balance was, how the inertia of the two was going, hip placement, who was getting stiff and things like that).

It was not that they were insanely quick (both of the guys were on the wrong side of 45) or that they knew a million throws or had some super deep technical knowledge of judo but it dawned on me they were both "native speakers" of judo.

By that I mean they had been around judo so long and had started when they were kids so that by now they simply had become native speakers in the sense of they could handle judo without a thought and were completely relaxed and confident. If you have ever taught language the huge gulf between a native speaker and an adult learner is obvious. And I realized that for these two guys, there had never been a time in their lives when they had not done judo. Judo was in no sense foreign to them.

In contrast, myself and two of the other guys had all started judo in their early 30s (and in my case in my early 50s) and judo for us was a foreign language and always would be. That fact does not discourage me, but it does point out that there is a huge divide between people who start a martial art very young and those that come to martial arts later in life.

When I used to hear stories about people starting martial arts when they were 5 or 8 or 10; I used to dismiss that fact as being largely irrelevant to their later skill levels. My thinking was, "well the years from 5 to about 16 the kids are just playing around with martial arts and it is not going to have an impact on their later skill as serious martial arts training can not really begin until the mid teens". But it turns out, I think I was wrong about that. In fact if you are going to be a native speaker of martial arts, so to speak, you have to start probably by the time you are 10.

It was an interesting revelation.

Take care,
Brian

Hello Brian,

Good post,that's the reason why I started to allow little Ethan to watch me throwing and striking my wrestling dummy (he loves it) and letting him jump on it and slap it. Plus buying all the kids martial arts movies I could find and that he will be watching in a few years. We will see how all of this will turn out.

Take care

William

Good post Brian.

Although I did start training when I was 10, I've seen a lot of people get to a very high level that started much later, well into adulthood.

I agree, if you hope to be competitive at an international or professional level, you'll usually need to start very young, so that your skill level will be high while you are still young enough to be in top physical form (besides the fact the young have far fewer responsibilities in general, hence more time to train).

On the other hand, I've seen men start grappling close to 50 years old who were very good by the time they hit 60. Rare, but possible. Much boils down to natural talent of course, but also how bad you want it, and how hard you are willing to train.

Interesting topic. Tim, Brian,

When one starts a new martial art past your mid 20s or later in life, do you think that drilling more cooperative technique for a longer time and introducing more non-cooperative practices later could be a good development technique for ingraining good habits?

I'm not trying to down play the great benefits of sparring, but for a time, when I was doing Judo randori I would feel that I had to keep "thinking" about technique and how to do it rather than just reacting to the situation and letting the body method and technique come out... my conclusions at the time were either, I didn't have enough experience in sparring, or I had not done enough non-cooperative drilling to apply the techniques in a "mindless" way. My techniques felt rather sloppy as I felt stressed by the fact the my mind was toren between thinking about how to do the technique and reacting to the situation. I didn't know if this type of situation could be over come with more sparring (the fear is repeating poor habits), or if laying off sparring (taking away the non-cooperative stress) for a while would allow for the techniques to more effectively enter the muscle memory.

Great post Brian.

William, if you haven't already done so, show your kid the movie "The Iron Monkey" (1993). The little boy is really amazing (and is actually played by an amazing little girl).

Shane