Looking Back at the First Six Weeks

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!