After my very first session, I ached badly for five whole days, I had blisters on both feet and I could barely walk. I wasn't surprised by this and I hoped that recovery would ease with time. My particular Karate group holds classes Monday and Wednesday night so in order to be able to do both sessions, I would need to feel fairly recovered within two days so I decided to start off with just one session per week.
On the first week my quads were the worst, on the second week I had the most extraordinary aching in my lats! Must have been from all that punching I think. On the third week it was my calves... well, at least my training was varied!
The fourth week brought an opportunity to watch a grading. At first I was hoping to take part in it myself as I had had a look through the syllabus and recognised all of the techniques mentioned. That was a very naive (and somewhat cocky!) attitude and luckily Garry (the instructor) knew better and encouraged me to just watch the first one. The grading took place after a full-length session so of course all of the participants were already tired. There was a yellow belt, a green belt and two orange belts grading.
The grading started out with all participants having to perform some basic techniques suitable for the yellow belt. Eventually he was asked to sit down and the others continued and the techniques moved onto orange belt level. The two orange belts sat down and the green belt continued on his own. The rule is that the higher grade has to do everything that the lower grades do, plus additional material specific to their grade. Thus, the higher the grade, the more gruelling the overall grading.
Following basics were Kata and then Kumite. The Kumite was interesting and took a couple of forms. For some of it, a higher belt was asked to help out and throw some specific attacks at the participant who then had to defend against them. There was also some free sparring and the most fun to watch was when the green belt had to fight both orange belts at the same time!
The grading went on for at least 45 minutes and unfortunately for them, they dont get a decision for another week or so after the grading takes place.
That was last week and due to a mixup in grading dates I ended up going to both sessions unintentionally. Sometimes, you need something external to give you that 'push' to do something and this was one of those times for me. Until then I still didn't think I was ready for two sessions a week but after that grading I found that a couple of days later I didn't ache anymore, so I went along both times this week with last night being the last session and today I feel fine! I still got blisters on my toes but they don't hurt anymore and I feel as though I have pushed through the initial pain barrier of the first few weeks.
I feel like I've now implanted Karate firmly into my lifestyle. I have my licence to practice, I've got my weekly routine all worked around my two nights a week out and I feel like I've definately settled into the training itself. I've been introduced to two Kata's, I've practised lots of basics, tried out the first Kumite, and even done some free sparring!
The sparring gave me a bit of a kick up the backside to be honest... I was never particularly good at it before so I didn't expect to be now but I was really quite crap. I kept finding myself closing my eyes and wildly flapping my arms around like a proper girl! A couple of my opponents were quite nice and went easy on me, attacking quite slowly so that I had a chance to defend but two purple belts gave me a bit of a beating! One of them, a big, tall guy seemed most adept at smacking me around the head with a backfist, one of which made my eyes water and I had to step aside for a moment. Another purple belt was only a teenager but his attacks came with such force that my arms and wrists became very painful from blocking them. I now have a large bruise on both arms for my efforts!
At first I was rather annoyed at this. "I'm only a white belt, this is my first time, why are they giving me such a hard time?", I grumbled to myself? Then I had a thought... I often read that the way a person reacts to you is almost entirely dependent on your behaviour. This accounts for why some people always seem to get noticed, or get ignored etc. Could it be, that they were being hard on me because I was actually sparring better than a true beginner (who had *never* done this before)? There was another white belt in the class that night, and this was her second lesson ever. She partnered with me first for the sparring and she stood in front of me looking exasperated, and said "I don't know what to do!" I at least knew what I was supposed to do, even if I was no good at it. I gave it my sincerest effort and got thwacked several times as a result!
So I made myself feel better about it by concluding that I must have fooled them into thinking I was a higher grade in a white belt disguise :-) Oh, and I decided right away to buy some sparring mits with full forearm guards!
Thursday, 28 September 2006
Sunday, 24 September 2006
Restarting Karate After 15 Years
My first contact with martial arts was Judo when I was about 14. As a child, I was extremely small for my age. I was very skinny and light weight and I found that at Judo, bigger kids would take advantage of that by dragging me down to the floor for easy points rather than use proper technique. I don't like scrappy, underhand stuff like that and I soon quit and found Karate instead.
That was very different as most of the time you practice techniques on your own and only occasionally use what you have learned against others in sparring. So my size was no longer a problem. I don't remember much of that early karate club and I had to stop going when we moved house.
A few years later my brother (who was a black belt or close to it) started going to a local club and urged me to join him which I did. I really enjoyed it but I didn't really stick to it very well. I found myself easily distracted by usual teenage stuff and once I started going to college and left home, I dropped out entirely. I reached orange belt if I recall.
That was when I was about 20 years old and since then I always thought about starting again but never got around to it. My fitness level decreased over the years and my weight increased. So I always figured that I'd need to get fitter before I could start up again. Well that was my excuse for 15 years anyway.
I had various other excuses too - an injury to a finger (which I eventually got fixed), and an ever-changing schedule whilst at University were my main ones. But in July of this year, three years after getting my finger fixed I graduated from University and no longer had any excuses. I started work a few days after graduation and right away I joined my local gym and started working out every lunchtime. In the back of my mind, I kept getting that niggling feeling that now really was the time to start Karate again.
At first I set myself a pre-requisite - to be able to run for 10 minutes on the treadmill. Of course, this was nothing but a delay tactic. I tried it out (running is not my strong point) and I managed all of about 2 minutes so I fugured it would be several months before I would be ready. But I had put the idea in motion and this got me interested so I had to take a look around. I wanted to practice in the style that I had done before, which is called Wado-Ryu and I found a friendly looking club in Windsor that looked promising.
This website got me all excited! I could see from the pictures that they had plenty of older members and they weren't just a bunch of black belt teenagers. They did lots of interesting events and then I checked their address - the club was on a road that I drove past on the way home from work! I just had to check it out so that night I found the hall where the club was held and it was only 10 minutes away from my house.
My this point, I *knew* I was going to start. Yes I was scared that I was too unfit and that I'd never get through an hour and a half of training without passing out but I just couldn't wait any longer. I phoned the instructor Garry and had a chat with him. Nice chap :-) He put all my fears to rest... The students varied wildly in age, ability and fitness level. Some would step to the side and take a short break for a sip of water. This was all I needed to know!
The following session I went along to watch and all the memories from 15 years earlier came flooding back. This was *exactly* what I was looking for. Everybody was friendly and loads of people came to talk to me during the break (yes, they even have a scheduled break mid-class!) and afterwards.
The very next session I dusted off my old Gi and went along. I had the time of my life! It was physically gruelling but I survived! I wonder now if I could have started this again years ago? Well it doesn't matter now as I've started and I'm loving it - it's absolutely the highlight of my week.
Moral of the story - if there's something you want to do and you've been putting it off because of some arbitrary excuse that you've made up for yourself, just go for it and give it a go, you might just enjoy it!
That was very different as most of the time you practice techniques on your own and only occasionally use what you have learned against others in sparring. So my size was no longer a problem. I don't remember much of that early karate club and I had to stop going when we moved house.
A few years later my brother (who was a black belt or close to it) started going to a local club and urged me to join him which I did. I really enjoyed it but I didn't really stick to it very well. I found myself easily distracted by usual teenage stuff and once I started going to college and left home, I dropped out entirely. I reached orange belt if I recall.
That was when I was about 20 years old and since then I always thought about starting again but never got around to it. My fitness level decreased over the years and my weight increased. So I always figured that I'd need to get fitter before I could start up again. Well that was my excuse for 15 years anyway.
I had various other excuses too - an injury to a finger (which I eventually got fixed), and an ever-changing schedule whilst at University were my main ones. But in July of this year, three years after getting my finger fixed I graduated from University and no longer had any excuses. I started work a few days after graduation and right away I joined my local gym and started working out every lunchtime. In the back of my mind, I kept getting that niggling feeling that now really was the time to start Karate again.
At first I set myself a pre-requisite - to be able to run for 10 minutes on the treadmill. Of course, this was nothing but a delay tactic. I tried it out (running is not my strong point) and I managed all of about 2 minutes so I fugured it would be several months before I would be ready. But I had put the idea in motion and this got me interested so I had to take a look around. I wanted to practice in the style that I had done before, which is called Wado-Ryu and I found a friendly looking club in Windsor that looked promising.
This website got me all excited! I could see from the pictures that they had plenty of older members and they weren't just a bunch of black belt teenagers. They did lots of interesting events and then I checked their address - the club was on a road that I drove past on the way home from work! I just had to check it out so that night I found the hall where the club was held and it was only 10 minutes away from my house.
My this point, I *knew* I was going to start. Yes I was scared that I was too unfit and that I'd never get through an hour and a half of training without passing out but I just couldn't wait any longer. I phoned the instructor Garry and had a chat with him. Nice chap :-) He put all my fears to rest... The students varied wildly in age, ability and fitness level. Some would step to the side and take a short break for a sip of water. This was all I needed to know!
The following session I went along to watch and all the memories from 15 years earlier came flooding back. This was *exactly* what I was looking for. Everybody was friendly and loads of people came to talk to me during the break (yes, they even have a scheduled break mid-class!) and afterwards.
The very next session I dusted off my old Gi and went along. I had the time of my life! It was physically gruelling but I survived! I wonder now if I could have started this again years ago? Well it doesn't matter now as I've started and I'm loving it - it's absolutely the highlight of my week.
Moral of the story - if there's something you want to do and you've been putting it off because of some arbitrary excuse that you've made up for yourself, just go for it and give it a go, you might just enjoy it!
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