Experience Alone Does Not Equal Skill or Knowledge — Part 3: The Danger of Ignoring Outliers

In Part 1, we broke down the myth that time alone equals skill or knowledge. Simply existing within an art for decades does not guarantee ability, growth, or real-world effectiveness.

In Part 2, we looked at the rare but undeniable outliers — individuals like Hironori Ōtsuka, Bruce Lee, and Moses Itauma — who achieved in a few years what most take decades to build. Their unmatched dedication, commitment, and innovation allowed them to condense decades’ worth of progress into a small window of time.

Now, in Part 3, we must address the danger that arises when such outliers are ignored.

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Why Rules Exist

Rules and traditions are vital. In karate, judo, kickboxing, taekwondo and beyond, recognition is normally only granted after decades — sometimes 20, 30, 40, or even 50 years.

This protects the art. For 99.9999% of people, this is the right path. The majority of martial artists require that much time to truly develop skill, gain depth of knowledge, and achieve maturity. The waiting periods and traditions safeguard martial arts from being diluted or cheapened.

And this is correct. Without such rules, martial arts would lose meaning.

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But… Outliers Exist

There are those one-in-ten-million individuals whose drive, focus, and commitment go so far beyond the norm that they achieve in years what others achieve in decades. These people don’t just work hard — they work far harder than anyone else. Harder than their peers, harder than many of their seniors, harder than even those with comparable knowledge or skill.

Their progress is not artificial. It is not cutting corners. It is the result of extraordinary dedication.

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The Danger of Ignoring Them

Here lies the danger: if martial arts refuses to acknowledge these outliers, it does not preserve the art — it tarnishes it.

• It punishes innovation and progress.

• It tells the next generation that no matter how much harder they work, recognition is impossible.

• It creates a culture where “waiting” matters more than skill, knowledge, and contribution.

Even worse, it betrays the very spirit of the old masters, many of whom were innovators themselves. If they saw karate — or any art — frozen in time, unchanged for a century, they would be horrified. Progress was their legacy.

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The Lesson

Rules exist to guide the majority. But exceptions exist to prove the rule. To deny those rare outliers recognition is not humility — it is blindness.

The danger is not in recognising them. The real danger is in ignoring them.