I Want This Done Yesterday. And That’s Part of the Problem.
Last night, I got to jump on the mat and run belt testing at Blur Martial Arts because Coach Dominic and James were both caught up.
Our belt testing has changed significantly over the last couple of months. And while I’m incredibly happy with the direction we’re going, I walked away frustrated.
Because I want this process done yesterday.
I want these kids to already have the skills I’m trying to teach them. I want their bodies to respond appropriately under pressure. I want them to stop winding up their punches, stop pulling their hands back, and start understanding the difference between speed and power.
And I want all of that right now.
Of course, that’s not how learning works.
Twenty years ago, if I had watched the belt test we did last night, I probably would have thought these kids looked terrible.
A four-, five-, or six-year-old demonstrating a memorized defense against a double wrist grab? That would have looked like martial arts to me.
But a kid getting startled, flinching, throwing an ugly strike, and scrambling to find another target?
That wouldn’t have impressed me.
And that’s because 20 years ago, I didn’t understand self-defense the way I do today.
Now, instead of telling a child exactly what attack is coming, we introduce an unexpected stimulus. It might be a loud noise, an aggressive movement, or someone suddenly grabbing them.
Their job isn’t to remember which technique they’re supposed to perform.
Their job is to recognize what’s happening, convert their natural flinch into a protective response, find the closest available target, and create an opportunity to escape.
If the first movement doesn’t work, they have to keep problem-solving.
It’s not always pretty.
It’s not always powerful.
And it’s definitely not going to look like a traditional martial arts demonstration.
But that’s the point.
The problem is that my ego still wants it to look better.
Last night, I watched a green belt and thought, “He should be generating more power than that.”
I watched other kids pull their hands back before striking, telegraphing their intentions and potentially giving an aggressor time to brace or react.
I watched kids struggle to understand when they should prioritize speed and when they should generate power through their hips.
And despite knowing we’ve only been transitioning to this approach for a couple of months, I was already thinking about everything they weren’t doing well enough.
Instead of just appreciating how much they’d learned.
That’s my ego.
And I think it’s also one of the reasons more martial arts instructors aren’t teaching Tony Blauer’s SPEAR System.
You have to be willing to look stupid.
You have to be willing to have your students look stupid.
You have to be willing to throw away things you’ve spent years mastering, teaching, and selling to people because you’ve come to understand that they might not be the best answer to the problem you’re trying to solve.
That’s not easy when you’ve built your identity around being a martial artist.
It’s even harder when your students, their parents, and the martial arts community expect you to demonstrate how good your martial arts are.
And this is where my journey into mental health and Buddhism has really changed how I look at what I’m teaching.
We talk a lot about healthy and unhealthy egos.
An unhealthy ego might protect someone from negative emotions by convincing them they’re worthless, incapable, or shouldn’t even try. If they don’t try, they don’t have to experience failure.
A healthy ego might convince someone they’re capable, competent, and deserving of success. That can be incredibly useful because it allows them to take risks and pursue challenges.
But both are still protecting us from negative emotions.
And even a healthy ego can become a liability when protecting our identity becomes more important than recognizing reality.
What I’ve become more interested in is developing a smaller ego.
An ego that doesn’t need to be constantly reinforced.
One that can tolerate looking stupid, being wrong, failing, and experiencing negative emotions without immediately needing to protect itself.
An ego that allows you to do what’s right without incurring so much emotional negativity in the process.
And I see that struggle in myself every time I teach.
I want to be the instructor who has already figured everything out.
I want my students to demonstrate how effective our program is.
I want parents to watch a belt test and immediately recognize how much better their kids are becoming at protecting themselves.
But real learning doesn’t always give you that satisfaction.
Sometimes it looks ugly.
Sometimes a kid freezes.
Sometimes they do something completely different from what you expected.
And sometimes the best thing you can do as an instructor is stop worrying about what it looks like and pay attention to whether they’re developing the ability to solve problems under pressure.
That’s a hard thing to measure with a traditional belt test.
We’ve started using checklists to make sure students are developing the coordination, balance, movements, and tactics we want them to learn.
But do I really want a kid standing in front of me demonstrating 32 memorized movements just to prove they’ve earned their next belt?
Some parents probably do.
That’s what people expect from a martial arts test.
But not every movement we teach is intended to be someone’s answer to a violent encounter.
Some movements develop balance and coordination. Some teach tactics and unpredictability. Others are part of our kickboxing and catch wrestling curriculum.
And I still want those programs to be good.
I enjoy kickboxing. I enjoy grappling. I enjoy the dopamine hit that comes from developing a skill and successfully applying it against a resisting opponent.
(And I’ll admit, teaching kids to flow spar without getting their egos involved is just as hard, if not harder, than teaching adults who always want to win.)
But none of that changes my priority.
Self-defense comes first.
We’ve even started moving away from calisthenics that don’t directly support the skills we’re trying to develop.
Aerobic and anaerobic conditioning are important. Strength matters. Fitness matters.
But if I’m spending valuable class time having kids do push-ups, I want to know what I’m trying to accomplish.
Is it general conditioning? Is it developing a physical capacity they need? Or am I doing it because that’s what martial arts instructors have always done?
If someone is holding your head underwater and you can’t reach their face, being able to generate enough force to push yourself up might be pretty important.
My examples are extreme, but they’re extreme for a reason.
I’m tired of teaching things simply because they’re cool, or because they make people feel confident, without asking how they contribute to someone’s actual safety.
Confidence isn’t the same thing as competence. And competence in a martial art isn’t automatically competence in self-defense.
My goal is to teach kids the SPEAR System early enough that these protective responses become part of their physiology before years of martial arts training and ego-driven habits start getting in the way.
I would love for a kid to start with us at four, five, or six years old and, by the time they’re 13, have a foundation they can carry into whatever they want to do next.
Judo. Brazilian jiu-jitsu. Muay Thai. MMA. Stick fighting.
Hell, they could go play baseball.
I don’t care.
I want SPEAR to be the bridge that allows them to pursue those activities without having to abandon their natural protective responses or rely on choosing the perfect martial arts technique when they’re suddenly frightened.
And I want our system to become efficient enough that even a kid who only trains once a week can develop meaningful self-defense skills without needing to dedicate their childhood to becoming a black belt.
That means teaching awareness, consent, and preparation. It means understanding when to avoid a confrontation, when to set boundaries, when to escape, and when physical resistance might be necessary.
It means teaching kids to think and problem-solve under pressure instead of trying to remember which throw, takedown, or punch combination they’re supposed to use.
Would I want my own little kids, especially my girls, learning this instead of a traditional Taekwondo, Shaolin Kempo, Brazilian jiu-jitsu, or Krav Maga program?
100%.
I’m building the program I want my own children to have.
And that’s probably why I’m so impatient.
Because every time I see something that could be better, I want to fix it immediately.
I want the kids to have these skills now.
I want the instructors to understand everything now.
I want the curriculum to be as efficient as possible now.
But there’s an irony in all of this.
I’m trying to teach kids not to let their egos interfere with their ability to protect themselves, while my own ego is making it difficult for me to appreciate the process of teaching them.
I want the finished product without having to tolerate all the imperfections that come with getting there.
And maybe that’s the biggest lesson I took away from last night’s belt test.
If I want to teach kids to tolerate discomfort, uncertainty, and failure without letting their egos take over, I have to be willing to do the same thing myself.
Because the goal isn’t to look like a badass.
The goal is to be safer.
And sometimes getting there means being willing to look like you don’t know what the hell you’re doing while you’re learning something that actually matters.
First class is free. No pressure, no contracts — just come see for yourself.
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