Permission to Fail: Creating Space for Learning in Martial Arts

By Roy Rolstad

There is something I have been thinking about more and more as an instructor:

We need to give people permission to fail.

And perhaps just as importantly, we need to give ourselves the same permission.

I have spent many years teaching martial arts, and one thing becomes increasingly clear with experience. People often become restricted when they are too afraid of making mistakes. They become careful. They choose solutions they already know. They stay within a safe area where they can look competent.

The strange thing is that the desire to avoid mistakes can eventually become one of the biggest obstacles to learning.

The Fighter Who Is Afraid to Enter

You can see it very clearly in sparring.

An athlete wants to attack, but knows that entering creates an opportunity for the opponent to counter. After being caught a few times, the athlete becomes increasingly careful.

Soon the primary goal has changed.

Instead of trying to land the attack, the athlete is trying to avoid being hit.

The distance becomes longer. The commitment disappears. The athlete waits for the perfect opportunity.

And sometimes that opportunity never comes.

Of course we want to teach athletes how to enter safely. We want good timing, good distance, good preparation and good tactical choices. But there is no way to learn these things without sometimes getting them wrong.

You have to enter a little too early.

You have to enter a little too late.

You have to misjudge the distance.

And yes, sometimes you have to get countered.

That counter gives you information.

Why did I get hit?

Did I telegraph my movement?

Was my distance wrong?

Did I attack without creating a reaction first?

Was I too slow getting out?

Then we try again.

Try. Fail. Discover. Adjust. Try again.

That is learning.

The Pattern Performer Who Cannot Lose Balance

I see exactly the same phenomenon in patterns.

An athlete becomes so concerned about maintaining balance and performing everything correctly that gradually something disappears from the pattern.

Power.

Acceleration.

Intention.

Expression.

The athlete has learned how to protect the performance from mistakes.

This can produce a technically tidy pattern, but there is a danger when the movement becomes so controlled that the athlete never approaches the edge of his or her current ability.

If you want to develop powerful movement, sometimes you need to challenge your balance.

You accelerate harder.

You move faster.

You try to stop more decisively.

And occasionally you lose your balance.

That does not automatically mean the attempt was bad.

Perhaps the athlete just discovered the boundary of the current ability.

Now we have something to work with.

Instead of immediately saying, “Balance!”, the instructor could sometimes say:

“Good. Now you are starting to challenge your balance. Keep that power and see if you can control the ending a little better.”

That is a very different message.

Performance Is Not the Same as Learning

This distinction has strong support in learning research.

Robert Bjork introduced the idea of desirable difficulties. One of the important lessons from this research is that good performance during practice does not necessarily mean that the best learning is taking place. Some practice conditions make performance look worse in the short term while producing better retention and transfer later.

In other words, the athlete who looks best during today’s practice is not necessarily the athlete who is learning the most.

This should make instructors think.

We naturally like clean performances. We like successful repetitions. They give us immediate evidence that our teaching is working.

But learning can be messy.

Sometimes struggle is exactly what we should be seeing.

Learning From Errors

Psychologist Janet Metcalfe reviewed a large body of research on learning from errors and found something highly relevant to martial arts instructors: making errors followed by appropriate corrective feedback can support learning.

Error tolerance can also encourage active exploration and engagement.

This is an important distinction.

Giving permission to fail does not mean ignoring mistakes.

The sequence is important:

Attempt → Error → Feedback → Reflection → Adjustment → New attempt

The mistake becomes information.

This also gives us an interesting way of thinking about training and competition.

Training is the place where we can afford to make mistakes.

Competition, grading or a real self defense situation is where we hope to benefit from everything those mistakes taught us.

If we desperately try to eliminate every error during practice, we may also eliminate some of the exploration that prepares people for situations we cannot completely predict.

Error Management Training

There is actually a field of research that comes remarkably close to this idea.

It is called Error Management Training, or EMT.

Nina Keith and Michael Frese describe a training approach involving active exploration and explicit encouragement to make errors and learn from them. Their meta analysis included 24 studies and 2,183 participants and found a positive overall effect.

What I find particularly interesting is that the benefits were stronger when people later had to transfer their learning to new situations, especially situations that differed from those used during training.

For martial artists, this should immediately sound familiar.

A live opponent does not cooperate with our lesson plan.

The distance changes.

Timing changes.

Pressure changes.

The opponent reacts.

The technique that worked perfectly with a cooperative partner may suddenly need to become something else.

This is one of the central ideas behind ITF Radix. We learn the pattern and its applications, but eventually we have to play with them. We change distance, resistance, timing, position and intention. At some point the original exercise may become almost unrecognizable.

That is where adaptability begins.

And adaptability requires permission to get things wrong.

Psychological Safety

There is also a social side to this.

Amy Edmondson’s influential work on psychological safety describes environments where people feel safe enough to take interpersonal risks. Her research connected psychological safety with learning behaviors such as asking questions, seeking feedback, discussing errors, reflecting and experimenting.

I believe this is highly relevant to the dojang.

Imagine two training environments.

In the first, every mistake is immediately highlighted. The instructor becomes irritated. Students feel that they are constantly being evaluated.

In the second, standards are still high, but mistakes are treated as part of the process. Students receive corrections, but they also feel free to ask questions, experiment and occasionally look a little foolish.

Which environment produces the most curious martial artist?

Which produces the athlete who dares to try something new?

Which produces the future instructor who is willing to think?

High standards and permission to fail can exist in the same room.

In fact, I believe they should.

Sometimes What Looks Like Sloppy Training Is Something Else

This becomes especially important when teaching children and teenagers.

Over many years of teaching, I have watched young athletes develop at very different rates.

Two children can appear to be at approximately the same technical level. Then adolescence arrives and suddenly their development seems to move in completely different directions.

One becomes stronger and more coordinated.

The other suddenly appears awkward.

Movements that looked easy a year earlier become difficult. Balance changes. Timing changes. Kicks that were previously sharp suddenly look less controlled.

Then, a year or two later, they can meet again at almost exactly the same level.

There is good science behind this observation.

Growth and biological maturation are highly individual processes. Research on youth athletes emphasizes that chronological age and biological development are not the same thing. Two athletes who are both fourteen years old may be at very different stages of maturation.

During periods of rapid growth, body proportions change. Limb length changes. Mass changes. Strength develops at a different rate. The nervous system has to control a body that may be changing surprisingly quickly.

Researchers sometimes discuss adolescent awkwardness, a temporary disturbance or challenge in aspects of coordination associated with periods of rapid growth. The evidence is more nuanced than simply saying that every teenager becomes clumsy during puberty. Individual responses vary considerably. Still, recent reviews describe plausible temporary changes in balance, proprioception, neuromuscular control and coordination around periods of rapid growth.

For an instructor, there is a simple practical lesson here.

The fourteen year old standing in front of you may be trying just as hard as six months ago.

The body has changed.

What If It Is Not Sloppiness?

This gives me a question I think instructors should occasionally ask themselves:

What if this is not sloppiness?

Perhaps the student is exploring.

Perhaps the student is attempting something beyond the current comfort zone.

Perhaps the student is afraid of failing.

Perhaps the student is tired.

Perhaps the student is growing.

Perhaps the student simply needs time.

If our immediate response is irritation, we may completely misunderstand what is happening.

This does not mean lowering our standards.

We still teach good stances.

We still correct balance.

We still expect effort.

We still develop power, timing, technical quality and discipline.

But there is a big difference between correcting someone and making them afraid of being wrong.

Sometimes the best thing an instructor can give a young athlete is a little slack.

Give them time.

Let them grow.

Keep teaching.

They may surprise you.

The Instructor Needs Permission Too

There is another person in the dojang who needs permission to fail.

The instructor.

As instructors become more experienced, there can be pressure to always know the answer.

We are supposed to demonstrate correctly.

Explain clearly.

Choose the right exercise.

Run a successful class.

But instructors need to experiment too.

Sometimes I have an idea for a drill and think:

“Let’s try this.”

And occasionally it does not work.

The drill becomes too complicated. The constraints produce something different from what I expected. People misunderstand the task. The progression that looked brilliant in my head turns out to be confusing on the floor.

Fine.

Stop.

Change it.

Try something else.

I see no weakness in an instructor saying:

“That didn’t work the way I expected. Let’s change it.”

Quite the opposite.

The instructor has just demonstrated the exact learning behavior we want from our students.

Observe.

Evaluate.

Adjust.

Try again.

Perhaps experience should make us more willing to experiment, because we have a larger foundation to fall back on.

Play Requires Failure

This is also why I believe so strongly in play as part of martial arts training.

Real play requires uncertainty.

If I already know exactly what will happen, it is hardly play anymore.

When we play with a technique, an application or a tactical problem, we create possibilities.

Some solutions work.

Some fail.

Some work once and fail the second time.

Sometimes the opponent gives us a reaction we never expected and suddenly we discover something new.

This is especially important when moving from closed skills toward open skills.

A predetermined technical exercise asks:

Can you perform this solution?

An open exercise asks:

Can you solve this problem?

Those are different questions.

The second requires decision making, perception, adaptation and inevitably mistakes.

That is why failure is not the enemy of play.

Failure is one of the things that makes play educational.

Give Them Some Slack

Perhaps we need to give each other a little more slack.

Give the fighter permission to get countered while learning to enter.

Give the pattern performer permission to lose balance while exploring greater power.

Give the teenager permission to temporarily struggle with a changing body.

Give the beginner permission to misunderstand.

Give the black belt permission to ask a basic question.

Give the instructor permission to try an exercise that fails.

And give yourself permission to be imperfect while learning.

There still needs to be feedback. There still needs to be discipline. There still needs to be quality.

But perfection should never become the entrance requirement for exploration.

A good learning environment gives people enough safety to risk mistakes, enough challenge for mistakes to actually occur, and enough reflection to turn those mistakes into learning.

Maybe we can reduce the whole idea to three words:

Explore. Reflect. Adjust.

Or perhaps even simpler:

Try again.

References

Bjork, R. A. (1994). Memory and metamemory considerations in the training of human beings. In J. Metcalfe & A. Shimamura (Eds.), Metacognition: Knowing About Knowing. MIT Press.

Edmondson, A. C. (1999). Psychological safety and learning behavior in work teams. Administrative Science Quarterly, 44(2), 350–383.

Keith, N., & Frese, M. (2008). Effectiveness of error management training: A meta analysis. Journal of Applied Psychology, 93(1), 59–69.

Malina, R. M., Rogol, A. D., Cumming, S. P., Coelho e Silva, M. J., & Figueiredo, A. J. (2015). Biological maturation of youth athletes: Assessment and implications. British Journal of Sports Medicine, 49(13), 852–859.

Metcalfe, J. (2017). Learning from errors. Annual Review of Psychology, 68, 465–489.

Wattie, N., et al. (2025). What do we know (and not know) about adolescent awkwardness in youth sports? A narrative review. International Journal of Sports Science & Coaching, 20(5).