Skill

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An unknown author and assumed practitioner of martial arts stated, “Skill is acquired through continuous practice, sophistication & depth (are achieved) by giving thought to it.” This meme may provide a solid sound-bite oriented toward practitioners and future practitioners but in reality does not provide for the depth and breadth of what it takes to develop skill. 

First, what is skill? Skill is the ability to do something well, an expertise in a particular ability or discipline. It is, apparently, a learned ability to carry out a task with pre-determined results often within a given amount of time, energy, or both. It is an ability one possesses that is either domain-general or domain-specific as to the skills. 

There are a variety of fundamental skills humans are able to achieve, i.e., labor skills, life skills, people skills, social skills, hard skills and mastering skills.

Labor: a craft that one achieves a certain level of expertise in such as electricians, carpenters and masons, etc.

Life: problem solving in personal affairs that involve human skills such as teaching, through direct experiences and are about handling problem solving issues common to daily life. 

People: understanding self, response moderation, effective communications, empathizing accurately, building relationships with trust, respect and with a outcome of productive interactions. 

Social: the ability to facilitate interactions and communications with others through social rules and relations. 

Soft: a sociological term relating to a person's "EQ" (Emotional Intelligence Quotient), the cluster of personality traits, social graces, communication, language, personal habits, friendliness, and optimism that characterize relationships with other people (personality and character of a person).

Hard: Hard skills are any skills relating to a specific task or situation. These skills are easily quantifiable unlike soft skills which are related to one's personality.

Mastering: Mastery pertains to perfecting a particular skill set. To reach mastery, experts claim that 10,000 hours or more of work will have to be put into training.

When discussing martial arts you could include any number and combination of skills mentioned in general above in reaching that goal of acquiring skill. One way, especially in a physical discipline like martial arts, continuous practice is a way toward skill but not exclusive and definitely not when coupled only with giving thought to it. There is a huge amount of information left out, missing, lost or deliberately glossed over for some reason. 

To gain skill in anything you first have to attain a comprehensive and complete knowledge of that discipline. Next is to attain a complete and comprehensive, “Understanding,” of that discipline as well. Then add in both the soft and hard skills of character and personality because that encompasses some very important skill sets toward mastery of a discipline. Only through skill can one achieve mastery and only with a blend and balance of all the seven fundamental skills can one attain, “Skill” and mastery of any discipline. 

To gain skill requires a mind-set and mind-state with a huge amount of dedicated and continuous time, effort, sweat and dedication. Attaining skills is not just a repetitive process and takes inventiveness and a mental skill set toward things like visualization with emphasis toward such practices, training and applications under stress such as the adrenal stress felt often when performing such skills in reality, real life. 

As a possible replacement to the opening quote I would suggest another by an unknown source, i.e., “An ability and capacity acquired through deliberate, systematic, and sustained effort to smoothly and adaptively carryout complex activities or job functions involving ideas (cognitive skills), things (technical skills), and/or people (interpersonal skills).” - unknown

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