Episode 701 - Martial Arts Tests: Pass, Fail, and Aftermath

In this episode, Jeremy and Andrew talk about Martial Arts Tests: Pass, Fail, and Aftermath.

Martial Arts Tests: Pass, Fail, and Aftermath - Episode 701

When is the right time to take a Martial Arts Test? What should students and instructors do after one passes or fails a test? In this episode, Jeremy and Andrew talk about Martial Arts Tests: Pass, Fail, and Aftermath.

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Show Transcript

You can read the transcript below.

Jeremy Lesniak:

Hey, what's going on everybody? Welcome. This is another episode of whistlekick Martial Arts Radio. And today's episode is titled, martial arts tests, pass fail and after aftermath, I was just wrong. When we talk about well, it's based on listener questions, so hang around, we'll get there. If you're new to the show, whistlekickmartialartsradio.com is where you go for everything related to the show, whistlekick.com is where you go for everything related to everything. It's our online home, it's where we've got the store where you can get stuff like mugs, sweatshirts and tees at 15% off using the code PODCAST15 of the ways you can support us in our mission to connect, educate, entertain the traditional martial artists of the world. If you want to support us in another way, well, we've got a Patreon patreon.com/whistlekick. Tiers starting at $2 a month were $2 a month and you get to know upcoming guests and a whole bunch of other behind the scenes stuff that goes up from there. And we deliver great value and people very rarely stop their Patreon contributions by telling them we're doing something right.

Andrew Adams:

Yeah, $2 a month is like 25 cents an episode. Roughly.

Jeremy Lesniak:

Yeah. Do you think we give them 25 cents worth of value per episode?

Andrew Adams:

If they're still listening right now, I would hope that they feel it's worth 25 cents.

Jeremy Lesniak:

Listening to that question alone is probably worth 25 cents. Could be if you want the entire list, because there's so many things that we do, and that you can involve yourself in that support us was okay.com/family. We throw in bonus content, it's kind of like a mini Patreon. It's not linked anywhere you got to type it in, but we change it weekly. So check it out whistlekick.com/family. Yes, this is a tough topic.

Yeah, yeah, this is the type of stuff. So I shouldn't say that the topics in this are really tough. The question that I received that led to the topic was top down work. We're not going to name the name. No, we're not going to read the whole email. But there was a stretch that I want you to read before you do. This is the stuff that drives me insane. This is the stuff that makes me angry and sad. And it's the reason that we do a lot of the things that we do, because my hope is if we can have even a slight influence on the martial arts industry to be more positive. And I don't know, less sucky than more people participate in martial arts for many martial arts grows. And that's our goal.

Andrew Adams:

Yeah, I would agree. So we did receive this question, this email from a guest listener from a listener. And they had an idea for Thursday's show and I think this is a good episode for us to have. And the portion that I wanted to read here says this last night, I was told to sit very early in my grading after my footwork was wrong on some blocks. Afterwards, my instructor didn't speak to me or look me in the eye, and they said nothing to recess. And is that back half?

Jeremy Lesniak:

That really frustrates me. Now, obviously, there's more. And I wrote back and forth like there was more to this. Yeah. And the reason we're not doing the whole thing is because then it becomes much more easily identifiable. And it's not important. It's really not. But what we're talking about here is clearly a different expectation between teacher and student. Yes, not only of performance, but of response. Now, an important element here. Well, you know, if you're testing for what this was all about, remote tests, it was a very early test. This person has been training at the school for a short period of time. I have witnessed people fail tests, it is uncommon. Now I understand. Every school has a slightly different culture around testing. And when someone is tested, I know some schools where they test on regular intervals. And at many of them, it is much more common for someone to not pass because they were told you're ready to test. It's something that most if not all students do. In this particular one, that was not my understanding. The schools that I grew up in, that's not how we did it, what you tested. When you were told you were ready. And the way my original instructors framed it to me, we invite you to test we know you're ready, you pass when you know you're ready. Interesting, which I really liked.

Andrew Adams:

I like that.

Jeremy Lesniak:

The purpose of the test is really, need to see, are you going to live up to the standards that we know you are capable of? Yeah, yeah. In the couple examples I can think of over the years where someone failed a test. It has almost always been because they quit. They stopped trying. I'm thinking of the most recent one. And this was years ago. Geez, we're going back to 2012. Actually, you mentioned a Facebook memory that popped up and I said, What was it from yesterday? I think it was this one. It was me doing a form and a test. And someone stopped, not not in my group. But there was somebody attending that test. And they, they stopped. It was all now. Yeah. There could be longer conversations around those specifics, but I'm not used to someone being told you know what? You go set. I've also never, never seen that. And all the tests I've been to. I consider myself a pretty good student of human behavior. It's something I've gotten a lot better at doing the show, I've had to learn how to interview and one of the things that is required and being a skilled interviewer is understanding people, learning how people are in such the fact that the instructor after having the person sit, did not make eye contact with them. suggests some kind of negative introspection embarrassed that they had failed their student. Yep. Anger at something. Something else, right. Like if you're, if I'm not going to make eye contact with you, Andrew, you know, your stances are crap. Go sit. Yeah. And I don't look at you from then on. I'm not feeling any kind of empathy. Yeah. Do you like me? Yeah. It's about me at that point. And that's why I don't like him. I think it could have been handled so much better. And so this broad or something, or this, this specific example, leads to the broader subject of how should, what should happen?

Now, one of the things we'll get out of the way quickly, because when we were reviewing what we wanted to talk about, we talked about testing a little bit. I have a very simple rule of testing, nothing should be tested, that is not part of training. The bit of the example that I use, and this will probably offend some of you, I don't care. If you expect someone who has certain fitness standards, and you don't implement that fitness training as part of your class time, it suggests that it's not important. Yeah. As an example, like, you have to run an eight minute mile or whatever, run, run three miles in, you know, 20 minutes. And as a class, you've never run. Yeah, running around your facility a couple of times does not count. Now, that could be slightly modified. If your school assigns homework. I expect you to run two miles this week. Right. But there are ways around that. Because the major pushback on that would be we don't have time to do everything. It's true. But there's still a way to hold people accountable and instruct them in what is important to you. Yeah. The threshold, you have reached a standard. The most important things in the test should be trained the most. Right? Yeah, I mean, in fact, it would not make sense that we did this one technique one time, and now it's 50% of the tests. Like that would be ridiculous.

Andrew Adams:

Yeah, I'm sad.

Jeremy Lesniak:

So that's aside, like, I know, you and I are on the same page about that when we put out I don't know if it was a specific episode. But it came up in something and I don't remember any pushback. So I'm going to assume that the majority of people are on board, at least conceptually with that.  We already established that schools run tests very differently. Some schools run tests really rough. My first black belt test was rough. It was challenging. Yeah, it was physically, emotionally mentally, spiritually taxing. I remember it in vivid detail to this day. That was the goal. Yeah. I've been part of tests that were not like that, but every test I've ever been to was positive. Now, maybe it wasn't rah rah rah cheering to keep winning. Maybe you had to remain quiet on the side. Yeah. But people were rooting for the people tested. There was encouragement.

Andrew Adams:

Yeah, there was this culture of wanting them to pass.

Jeremy Lesniak:

Everybody wanted the people there to pass. Yeah. And what I'm hearing was in this email Now, granted, I'm reading my own stuff in this email. I wasn't there. Yeah, this wasn't even a phone conversation. But what I'm getting is, that's not what this was. Because I've witnessed many, many tests. And in low rank tests, it is not uncommon. In fact, I call it quite common. In fact, the testing I was recently at with you guys, and there were corrections done on the floor. Yep. Make this modification? Because guess what, there's a lot to know. Yeah. And sometimes people are nervous.

Andrew Adams:

Absolutely.

Jeremy Lesniak:

And I would assume we want to create a culture where people are not afraid of their mistakes. Because what happens when people are afraid of making mistakes and are? Well, they just stopped doing it. They don't drop. Yeah, they just stop thinking about if there is a more severe response to getting something wrong than to not doing it all. They will not do at all your conditioning, how we show up in our training, how we show up as students, instructors, etc. conditions, the people around us in how we want them to act towards us. If you're an instructor, and people get more guff because they did something wrong, then when they are not there, you're training them to not show up.

Andrew Adams:

Yeah, it's a good point.

Jeremy Lesniak:

And I think for a lot of schools that can't grow, this is what you're doing wrong. Yeah. Now, yeah, this is a whole other topic we could go into. So I'm going to correl this to testing. But yes, there are ways where you correct people, and you hold a firm standard, and you can still be positive and encouraging. And it doesn't have to be like You're doing great, even though your stances suck. Right? It doesn't have to be that there are ways to do it.

Andrew Adams:

Yeah.

Jeremy Lesniak:

You've seen a lot of tests.

Andrew Adams:

Yep.

Jeremy Lesniak:

Have you ever seen an instructor? Fail someone and then give them the silent treatment?

Andrew Adams:

No. And let's be clear, was this message that came in didn't come in yesterday?

Jeremy Lesniak:

Nope. We left a month ago.

Andrew Adams:

We have no idea what's transpired after the test till today. But the answer is no. I've also never seen in the middle of a test, an instructor sit somebody down and fail them in the middle of their test. The handful of failures I have seen, the test has happened. And it was all of a sudden. People were called up to receive their rank, and this person just wasn't called up. Because the people there theoretically, they're prepared. I have always been taught that. If your instructor is asking you to test, you are ready to test that he or she is not going to have you be up there if you're not ready.

Jeremy Lesniak:

Right. And so, as an instructor, I would want to know, what else are they getting? Right? What are they getting wrong? Yeah, I wouldn't want to give them a full report, even if I'm going to fail them, even if they screw up so badly in the first five minutes. Yep. I want to be able to give them a full report. So you know, everything was great, except for this thing over here. That's a deal breaker. Yep. And I was rooting for you. And I know you'll come back and crush it next time.

Andrew Adams:

And if there are 10 things, and I'm just picking numbers out of the air, right? If there's 10 things that students have to know for their test, and the 10th thing they get wrong, but they had the first nine, right. Okay, you as the instructor have to determine whether to pass or fail, right? But if the first thing they do is wrong, and you sit them down and you don't even watch things. Was it 0% or 90%? Yeah, like, you have no idea you know, and I think that's the thing that gets me the most you ever been perfect at a test but gosh, no ever seen anyone perfect at a test? Me either. I mean, my last test was that you were acting fine. Oh, I was so bad. My wife videotaped the whole thing.

Jeremy Lesniak:

How many times have you watched it? Kick yourself

Andrew Adams:

Once and I've refused to watch it again. He did great. So he raved. No, you really. But my point is, I didn't stop right. I made a mistake. And let's be clear, with the exception of one mistake I made, my instructor would have no idea that I made the mistake. Every other mistake I made he knows he knows I made that mistake. But I kept going, right?

Jeremy Lesniak:

You were nervous. You'd already been training all day.

Andrew Adams:

Yep.

Jeremy Lesniak:

There's a bunch of other stuff going on. And it was a surprise.

Andrew Adams:

Yep. So, but the thing is, he wouldn't have asked me to test if he didn't think I was ready and prepared for it. So I've been involved in dropping organizations at a high level, where we will have a student come to me and say, hey, you know what I really want to play in your group. And I tell them, I don't know, like, it's up here. And you're not quite, they're like, I'm happy to work with you. And so they would start to come to practice. And on a weekly, bi weekly basis, we would get together for a private lesson. And I would let them know, this is what you're doing? Well, this is in order to make it because we were going to the World Championships in August, and they wanted to be able to play with the band in August. And I said, alright, right now you're not ready. If the world championship were tomorrow, you would not play with us. This is what you need to do to work on in order to get there. And then a couple weeks would go by, and I would say, All right, this is good. You're doing good. Like this is what you need to work on. But that constant feedback, because what's the alternative? I just tell them, they're not good enough. And then they go away? Well, I want them there. I want as many as we want them to get better. I want them to get better. As a teacher. I think that theoretically the goal is you want everyone to keep in this scenario. I want them to play in the band, because if they're good enough, it'll make the band better, right? You don't necessarily have that within the martial arts context. But as an instructor, I want my students to stick around and I want them to get better. So by essentially snubbing and ostracizing them, you're doing the exact opposite.

Jeremy Lesniak:

Yeah. It's as simple for me as if you want people to show up. If you want people to get better if you want martial arts to grow in your own little circle or globally. You have to create a culture where that is encouraged. Yep. And we all know what makes people respond. And there's a difference between negative reinforcement and ostracization. And that the latter is what we're talking about here. So if I was to speak to the instructor that I don't know, I don't know this instructor, even though I know a little bit about what I personally wrote in, I don't know the instructor was speaking that instructor, I would say, okay. Clearly, you have some stuff you have to work on in your personal life. Something clearly made, and I know a little bit on the subject, because there was more context. And I think you'd be the whole thing.

Andrew Adams:

Oh, I didn't, that's okay. That's fine.

Jeremy Lesniak:

So there was a response. We've added a few messages, there was some more context. And I was right. There was stuff going on in that person's like, yeah, and they took it out on their students. And that really ticked me off. But that doesn't mean it's too late. It's never too late to apologize. It's never too late to make it right. I was at the gym on Sunday, lifting weights. And I was having a rough day. And the short of it is I said something to someone, I asked someone who said, Hey, can you turn down your music cuz they were playing their music on their phone? And I had my earbuds in.

Jeremy Lesniak:

And it was music I liked. But I was listening to my stuff. Yeah. And I was like, Hey, can you turn? Do you have earbuds? And he's like, no. And I was like, turning it down. And he's like, yeah, no problem. And I was like, You know what, in a second, the gym has speakers. It's totally fine. I put my own music on. I am obviously just taking my emotions out on that. Even if they're willing, even if they're accepting. I was like, No, you know what? I'm sorry. I've screwed up at this moment. Please don't let me turn my music up in my headphones a little bit. Yeah. Because then we both hear what we want. And we actually have a reverse argument. No, no, it's fine. Like, no, no, it's not fine. I'm wrong. Yeah. And it's okay to be wrong. It's okay to be wrong, because that's how we learn. And so in this context, this student is probably never gonna get that footwork wrong again. Yeah, that's true. But they may also never train again. They may also be terrified of ever testing in the future. Yeah. They might now have issues with martial arts, those personal events that are pressured, they may never feel prepared. Yeah. There are so many psychologically damaging things that are unavoidable. As potential elements here.

Andrew Adams:

And the fact that it happened at a test by the editor or at a time in this person's tree. I think that's early on, and be so early in the test. You know, I mean, I've only been involved with one organization that had an instant fail for a test, and it was during sparring. If you draw blood during sparring, if you punch somebody hard enough that they drew blood, you automatically fail. Yeah, that was one particular school.

Jeremy Lesniak:

And everyone knew that.

Andrew Adams:

Oh, absolutely.

Jeremy Lesniak:

You know, and while I will accept that there are elements of testing, that are incredibly subjective. And to the point where I can walk people and like, yeah, that person is this, right? Like, you can tell, they shouldn't be telling, there's so much subjective element to martial arts. But anything that would constitute an automatic failure should be codified. And public. Yep. If there is one thing I can do to screw up, like drawing blood and sparring, or my feet not being right, or something similar, it should be written down, everyone should know about it ahead of time. So they can give it the probably because theoretically, if it's an automatic fail, it is an absolutely critical element for safety, or for progress, or whatever. And if it's that critical, everyone should know that ahead of time, so they can treat it as appropriate. And it was on a black belt test.

Andrew Adams:

This was at the black belt level, you should be able to spar at this school, the thought was you should be able to spar with enough control to not draw flat, right? Absolutely. But that's at someone's career, who has been in the martial arts for a long time. To have something so early in this person's career can be so detrimental for they're continue to watch the train. It's really sad. Now, obviously, we're not talking to the person who got stuck.

Jeremy Lesniak:

The instructor, the instructor is the one who messed up here, not the student in my mind. I'm assuming the student will hear this. And we'll probably have some feedback. And I hope so I like to get some more context for what has transpired since I think it's been about a month. So there's probably been some more information that I would love to know that I'm not going to share with all of you. But we're really doing this episode, not for that one person, but for all of you. And what's the goal of doing that episode, the goal of doing that this episode is that you think like all of our episodes, we want you to think, and to specifically if you are a student, and you're coming up for testing, this may create some questions that maybe you're not comfortable bringing to an instructor, but to a higher rank, someone who's starting through that test. One of my favorite questions to ask is what don't I know? I don't know. Yeah, this won't be a good example. Sometimes people don't know how to answer that question. And so I will flip it around like this. How might I mess up and not be aware ahead of time that I'm messing up? You know, when you're sparring? If you're gonna hit someone, make sure that you're not you know, that your fingernails are cut and you're not drawn blood? And yeah, you know, when you punch to the face, make sure you've got enough control that you're not splitting lips. Okay, that makes sense. Instructors, if you have a school,if you have been around a while, you probably have a rough format for a test in mind. It's okay to tell them. Yeah, it's okay to give them an idea of what's expected. Now, if there are things that you're not going to tell them, tell them, You're not going to tell them. There will be things that we don't tell you. We don't know how long the test is going to be. But we need you here at this time. Ready to go at this time? Yeah, and the test will run until we are done, which could be as late as this time. Sure. Remember, why? Why do you do this? Why? Why did we test it? Or why do we have martial arts tests?

Andrew Adams:

Oh, that's a deep subject. Maybe it's an episode topic. Yeah. I have always felt that one of the reasons we test is to push people into a place where they feel slightly uncomfortable. Because that's how it's gonna be in the real world. If they get attacked, which God forbid, never happens, but it's not going to be rehearsed. And so tests are typically rehearsed, you know, you're asked to get up there and do your thing. And that's what you do. And it's gonna put you in a little bit of pressure, and you're going to react a certain way.

Jeremy Lesniak:

For me, it's it's that but a little more simply, it's evaluation under pressure. Yeah, because some of us perform better under pressure. Some of us don't. And it's a check for balance, where are you? How has your investment in time effort translated into knowledge? Are you able to perform? Are you able to do these things that we expect you to do? And if the answer is no. Then I consider that in most all, most maybe, yeah, not just many, but most cases to be a mutual failure. Your job as a student is to learn. Yep, yep. And if you're not learning, it is your responsibility to find a way to learn. Your job as an instructor is to teach and convey information to help them learn. You can't cram it into their brain. No, but if what you're doing is not landing properly, you should have different methods at your disposal to convey that information. Absolutely. So it's a check and balance testing is a check and balance of those relationships between teachers. Help you get feedback?

Yeah, I hope people have opinions. I hope they will leave them in the Facebook group whistlekick Martial Arts Radio behind the scenes. You can leave them as comments on our website whistlekickmartialartsradio.com. If you want to share them privately, you can email Andrew, right. Andrew@whistlekickmartialartsradio.com. Jeremy@whistlekick.com. Don't forget we've got our Patreon, patreon.com/whistlekick starts as low as two bucks you can move up. We've got different tiers at different prices, we give you back different things that have different values at those different tiers. Whistlekick.com/family for all the things you can do to support us in our mission to connect, educate, entertain. Social media is @whistlekick. Everywhere PODCAST15 to save stuff that whistlekick.com. That's good, let's say all together. Okay. Until next time, train hard, smile, and have a great day.