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!