Issues = Progress

I had a 1-on-1 recently. Before it, I took a video of my form and sent it in as a reference for discussion. The session was great—lots of useful feedback, and plenty of things for me to work on.

But I found myself chuckling a bit.

I can remember back to my white, yellow, and orange belt days. Even then, I had the habit of taking videos and asking for feedback. But the responses were very different. They were usually along the lines of:

“Everything looks really good—just keep at it.”

“I can’t offer much for feedback, keep doing what you’re doing.”

“Other than a small adjustment here, you’re on the right track.”

Now, as I’ve moved up the ranks, the lists I get back seem to be getting longer and longer.

At first glance, that feels a bit backwards.  More experience…more things to fix?  I trust that I’m not somehow getting worse. So the only conclusion is that the more things I can find (or be shown) to improve, the more progress I’m actually making.

It’s not that the flaws are new.  But I imagine my ability to understand, and analyze them, is.

This really clicked for me when I looked at it from the instructor side.

With lower-level students (especially younger ones), I try to limit feedback to simple, foundational points. Not because there’s nothing else to correct—but because anything beyond that wouldn’t be helpful yet.  But with higher-level students, the approach shifts.  They’re still working on the same fundamentals. But now I can add in more details because they have the capacity to understand and apply them.

More issues = more progress...or maybe the other way around depending on which way I'm looking at it.  Either way, I'm taking the most recent laundry list as a compliment.