One of the greatest benefits of training in a martial art is FOCUS. Parents often look to martial art schools to help their children in this avenue of life. However today I am speaking of focus with respect to adults.

Adults have as many, if not more focus issues than children do. I am not referring to their ability to focus on a task and complete it, which can also be a problem, I am however referring to the ability to focus on what is important, and discarding what is not.

The belt system in a martial art is designed to help with goal setting. I wrote about this, in this blog article entitles Kudos to the Belt System. However keeping focused on the goal with all the distractions in life can be a challenge. Here is an example of what I am referring too.

How have you set your priorities? Are you thinking about developing yourself, or are you sitting at home watching the Simpson’s, eating a bag of chips and having a beer? Last night I was teaching the advanced class for adults in my school. I am not always available for this as I have several locations. I had a total of 6 students, 3 Black Belts and 3 Red Belts. How many could have been in class? There are currently 17 eligible and considered to be active students who could have been in class. Many of these students were playing games and posting on Facebook. This is a loss of focus on their part and will take a toll in their quality of life sooner or later.

This is especially true for advanced students, martial arts training is an important priority in life, at least I hope it is. These students of the arts have often lost focus on what is important because they ‘get caught up’ in the day to day rat race of life. Because of this the 2 1/2 hours of training each week will often go to the waste side. There lives will also often filled with stress and frustration.

Why is this training so critical? Because when we lose focus on our training we also lose focus in other important areas of our life, including our health. There is nothing more important than the time we spend on ourselves because if we don’t look after ourselves we cannot focus on other important things in our life like family and friends. People need to recharge after a hard day. Martial Art training provides this recharge.

Black Belts will often come and see me and give me the reasons why they are not in class. These are usually just excuses. The number one excuse is a long day at work or I had to do something at home. Well my day starts in the office at 7:30am, and goes until class finishes each day at 9:00pm. I don’t cut out and go home, even though I could. I focus on the task at hand. When we are focused, because we are looking after ourselves, everything becomes more efficient.

I urge all people reading this, martial artists or not to take a look at your life and see where your focus is? If you feel stress in your life it is because you are out of focus. I put in 14 hours days working, but I sleep well at night, without the worries that keep so many people awake.

Where is your focus and what are you focusing on? If you are under a lot of stress, your focus is lost. If you are not a martial artist, consider it. If you are get out and train! Twice per week is not much when you consider the benefit of training and you all know this benefit well.

Martial Art training is time well spent, unlike the Comedy Network which brags about time well wasted.