2026-04-22

Teaching my regular classes at the Ross Farnsworth - East Valley YMCA.

Last night we dialed up the pressure on our sparring drills. We’re still not quite to “free” sparring. We’re doing what I’d call high-intensity, one-step, pre-arranged sparring, and we had to talk a bit about mental “toughness.” In karate, we can’t just train to be physically tough. We also have to cultivate the mental toughness necessary to use our physical skills, and keep using them even when the going gets tough.

How do we do that? The same way we train any skill … by starting in “easy” mode, ramping up the difficulty until we fail, and then rewinding just a bit until we build enough comfort in the “danger zone” that we’re able to push our failure point a bit further, then rinse and repeat.

In the context of mental toughness, this can mean sparring with a speed and intensity that makes us uncomfortable, then dialing it back just a bit and maintaining that level of intensity until we build some comfort, then dialing it back up again.