As we get closer to tournament and testing time, you will start to receive more detailed corrections and positives of your pattern. It’s important to remember that instructors are there to correct what we both think you can fix, and what is expected of your rank. At our regional camp in November, 6th Degree Master Instructor Ms. Nicole McGhee taught a forms seminar, and one of the first things she said was that if you do your pattern in front of someone and don’t expect to hear anything to work on, then you need to check your ego. She was 100% correct. Mr. O and I have both done taekwondo for 20+ years. Every time I do my form in front of higher ranks they find something I can improve. Sometimes it is a major issue, sometimes it’s just that they know I could do one aspect better. But if I got my feelings hurt every time they corrected me, or always thought they were wrong, I would never get better.
Winston Churchill once said that “Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfills the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things.” If you want to improve, you have to learn to take constructive criticism and apply it. If you repetitively get the same feedback from your instructors, you may want to look at how much you’re trying to do what they said. There’s a big difference between ability and actuality. But you have to act fast, because when people stop giving you criticism, it’s because they no longer think you are capable of doing any better.