Something that could have helped me right from the start is:

Train smarter, not harder

Sounds simple doesn’t it? I thought so myself but it isn’t as easy to do as it sounds. When I started taking Karate classes, I tried to train as often as I could but because of that, I often trained with much less than full power or heart. Even though I did kata after kata or basic move after basic move, I was not improving. There was a point where I was doing 10 or more kata a day and some days I would do up to 25. The problem is that I would just go through the motions. I was lacking kime and my moves were very robotic and choppy. Instead of putting my full speed and full power in to my kata, I was doing the moves hoping that it would help me improve but instead I feel it held my performance back a great deal.

Then came the wake up call:

At my last rank examination, I was told that my kata was technically good but I ran out of energy about half way through and my power dropped off significantly. I was told the same thing about my kihon. After understanding what happened at my exam, I cut back on my training a great deal. Now, I will only train if I can put in 100% and if I cannot, I will try another time or day.

It has taken me almost three years to realize that training at less than 100% will do nothing but hurt my performance. Hopefully, my mistakes will help keep many of you from making the same mistakes too.