Respect in Martial Arts: The purpose of bowing
Students who are walking into a martial arts school for the first time might be surprised at the amount of bowing that goes on! When I first began training, I felt self-conscious when I bowed, mostly because I wasn’t raised in a culture where it’s commonplace. But once I understood the purpose behind it with regards to respect in martial arts, it became a ritual of sorts and I use it to focus my training and mindset. This post will focus on the purpose of bowing, and hopefully you will find a way to make bowing a helpful part of your approach to training.
Depending on the school and particular martial art, a student may bow on and off the mat, to each training partner, to instructors, to senior students and junior students…it can seem endless! At Elite, we typically bow when we step on and off the mat, we line up and bow at the beginning of class, and we bow and touch gloves/hands with our training partners before and after each set of training. This may seem strange or unnecessary at first, but bowing and showing respect in martial arts is traditional in most if not all of the martial arts. Respect is one of the core values that the school is built upon, so we incorporate bowing into our classes.
When we line up in two lines at the beginning of class (all classes do this, whether it’s fitness classes, muay thai kickboxing, krav maga, warrior yoga, bjj brazilian jiu jitsu, mma mixed martial arts, kali silat, or self-defense), we bow to the instructor or the school, and then the front line turns to the back line and everyone bows again. When you bow to the school (in those two lines) you are, in a way, pledging to uphold the values of the school and pledging to train with a clean heart and open mind. Bowing to the instructor and addressing him or her properly is often misunderstood; it does not mean the instructor is superior to the student. Rather, it’s a way of showing respect for the years of training and hard work that the instructor has put towards martial arts and a way of honoring the fact that the instructor is willing to share their hard-earned knowledge with you. When the instructor bows to the student, he or she is showing respect for the path the student has chosen (one the instructor knows to be long and challenging!).
Martial arts training has a great potential for injury, and your training partner is essentially trusting you with his or her safety; it’s vital that the people we train with be good people! Accidents happen, but they should never happen as the result of anger or carelessness. When we bow and touch gloves with our training partners, we are promising to be focused, controlled, and to train in good faith. The bow is also a way of thanking them for training/teaching you…without a partner, training becomes much more difficult!
Finally, at Elite we bow when we step on and off the training mat. Again we are showing respect to the school and instructors, but there’s an additional element as well. Bowing when stepping on the mat is a pledge to leave your outside worries and stress at the door so that you can focus on training and learning without being distracted. If you come on the mat with a negative attitude it affects not only you, but your training partners and potentially the entire class as well. When we bow off the mat, we are showing gratitude and respect for the knowledge gained there.
So how do we actually bow? In any class, but especially in Muay Thai, we bow in the Thai manner (called a “wai”). Place your hands together in front of your chest or chin with the fingertips pointing up and dip your head slightly. The higher the wai, the more respect that is shown. In other classes it’s fine to give a slight bow at the waist in the more traditional manner. Either bow is acceptable for stepping on and off the mat, and both show respect.
On a personal note, I love training in martial arts. I’m nearly always happy when I’m training or teaching, so for me, bowing is always about respect and gratitude…to my teachers, to my students, to my training partners, to my school, to my arts, to my fortune in having access to a fantastic school and instructors, to my luck in being healthy enough to do what I love…the list goes on. So in addition to the reasons I listed above, bowing is a way of reminding myself to appreciate what I already have and what I still have left to learn.
~Katie Toney
Elite Training Center
1628 South Pacific Coast Highway,
Redondo Beach, CA 90277
(310) 543-1600
www.elitetrainingcenter.net
