It doesn't all work

One thing I dislike about Karate is explanations that just can't work. This usually has something to do with movements in Kata. I love Kata, and every move has at least one meaning. What I hate is simple, throw-away explanations.

At the third rising block in Heian Shodan. "You break your opponent's arm." Really? You just do a rising block that smashes through a 2 inch diameter bone. Really? Sometimes it's explained as "Grab the arm, twist, and as you pull down you break your opponent's arm." Really? I've done that move on people, and had it done on me many times. It hurts the tricep like crazy, but the bone is under no significant pressure at all.

Or Heian Nidan, nukite (spear hand strike). "You jam your fingertips into your opponent's solar plexus." Really? My money is on the torso, not on the fingertips.

So often the easy, but silly explanation is taken as gospel. Anytime the move is to break a bone, or to attack with a weak weapon, it should be thought as a code to mean, "This is NOT the explanation, and you better try and figure out what is a better truth."

I like looking for better truths. Sometimes I find one. More often I find an instructor who has done the research, and who shares with me. Often, blocks are really attacks, and attacks are blocks, or done differently than the obvious. Sometimes a block is a throw, or a kick is a diversion. My old instructor, Sakurai Sensei is a master at this. Living near my home, Ogawa Sensei, is also a genius at this form of Karate.

Most instructors, even good instructors, just don't have the interest or the knack.

I wish I were better at it, but at least I learn from the best.

Karate Stuff

There is so much to be exposed to before one can wear the coveted Black Belt. Of course, there is the obvious stuff, like stances and kicking and blocking and punching. That's not what I mean.

There are the Katas, each of up to 75 moves, which most be done perfectly correctly.  Nope, that's not it either.

I mean stuff like breathing. Everybody knows how to breath, but not how to do so for maximum effect. And which muscles does one squeeze in a particular situation.

Why so picky, if the basic movements are 'correct'? Because 'correct' isn't good enough. A Black Belt candidate needs to show that their brain knows the technical things, and that the brain has trained the body how to apply them properly.

This shows up in all the test sections, in the kihon (basics), Kata (forms), and even in the Kumite (fighting).

An example is the very first technique done in the entire exam. It is a triple punch. Step forward with the right foot, punch with the right hand, then the left hand, then again with the right. Sounds easy, expecially if one is young, fast, and athletic. Wrong. It's very technical. On the first punch one moves the hips in a way known as hip vibration, on the second, the hip is cocked back and delivers hip rotation, on the third, the hips again perform hip vibration.

I get a kick out of activities where one claims one is an expert after an absurdly short period of training. It took me just over 4 years to receive my first degree Black Belt (Shodan). Was I an expert? Not bloody likely.

In Karate, one is considered a beginner upon earning Shodan. It is time to START learning. Sort of like saying, "you have completed kindergarten, and can now enter grade one".

I prefer the Japanese version of expert to the western one. I'll never consider myself a Karate expert, even if someday I become one.

What Good is Karate, anyhow?

What good is Karate? Hard thing to answer.

Study for a couple of years, and you'll improve fighting ability greatly. Funny thing is that I've never been in a real fight, so who cares if I can kick and punch? Turns out I don't really need self-defence.

Karate is good exercise, I guess. If somebody wanted to join our club solely for health, I'd send them away. Yoga, or Pilates, or tons of other stuff are more healthful. Karate is not good for back problems, or bum shoulders, or hips. We use all those parts in a very, very harsh fashion, which causes a bucketload of strain. Fair percentage of Black Belts have some kind of interesting knee injury.

So what has it really done for my life?

I never wanted to teach Karate, but inherited that role by necessity. Got pulled into teaching the adults first. After a while, I began to enjoy it, and I turned out to be pretty good. Next I was pulled into taking over the kids classes. Didn't think I liked kids. Turns out I do, and was good at teaching them, too.

My wife is a school teacher, and I'd been watching her career, and started to be envious. She got to teach, and I was an lousy appliance salesman. When my job ended, I decided to go back to University to become a real teacher, too.

Got my degree, and entered the teaching profession.

Can't imagine any other sport that could have gotten me into a career I really, really love.

Never Was A Champion

Growing up, I was never the athletic kid. I liked comic books, and TV, and a hundred other indoor, solo activities. Did all the outdoor stuff for fun, like scratch baseball games, but was low in the pack in ability. Wasn't the kid that got picked last, but a long way from first either. Didn't matter in day-to-day life, but I never joined any teams as a result.

Not choosing sports didn't help the situation any. Wasn't a klutz, but never got any good.

Fell in love with Karate. It was different from other sports. You do it in a packed room, while being all alone. Nobody cares if your punch gets better, except you. Your weak kick will never be the one that lets the other team get a home run.

I was pretty good. Turns out I have a well above average sense of spatial awareness, so Kata memorization came easily. I inherited my family's lack of flexibility, so it wasn't all easy.

Weak flexibility meant I'd always have limited kicking prowess, at least up high. We all have our burdens. Turns out I don't have a very good reaction time. That can only be slightly improved by vast amounts of training. Also, not being athletic, means my body doesn't naturally do cool things by itself. Anything cool I can do in Karate comes from endless preparation and practise.

Do I sound like an off-the-shelf great fighting machine? If so, you better read it all again.

In tournaments, I did pretty fair in Kata. Tons of practise is the key there. Wasn't a champ, but it also wasn't embarrassing. Got the odd medal. Fighting was another kettle of fish. After getting blown away in a couple of events, I started counting.  Spread out over my first 3 or 4 events, I went 11 matches without a win. Usually, I wouldn't score a single point.

Very discouraging, but then I began scoring more often. I'd win the odd match. Got good enough that even serious fighters can't take me too lightly.

I can teach students how to fight well, and help them achieve tournament success. I'm kinda Angelo Dundee, not Muhammad Ali. It suits my personality better, too. I get more pride out of my students' success than I've ever have had in my own.

Funny, I'm also a school teacher.

 

Running

I've been running for a bit less than 20 years. I started for fitness reasons. Can't remember much more than that, as it was a very long time ago. Used the car to measure my very first route. Set a goal of one mile out, and one mile back. Was proud of myself for making it.

Soon found it too mindless, so ran with music, and later with podcasts and audio books. Started with a cassette tape player, for Pete's Sake, then went through a cd player or two. Had one of the early mp3 players. It was big and held almost nothing. On to better and better players. Finally got an ipod in 2009, and then a better one.

My wife didn't like my running at first. She was scared I'd wreck my knees, but after a decade or so seemed to accept it. Now she's my biggest supporter whenever I head out, even when I do something stupid like the half-marathon I ran today. It's my second one. Does that count as having completed a marathon?

Sadly, the race people publish our times and I can't help checking how I compare. Not really well, it turns out. Beaten by all the young folks, and most of the geezers my age. Two of the dudes in the 70 and over category beat me, one of them by over 20 minutes. Bastard.

Anyhow, I run. It's become as much a discipline as an exercise. I run every day I'm not working, except for sacred rest Fridays. If I miss a day, I make it up later. If I know I'm going to miss, I might make it up beforehand. It's all good.

To quote Dory, "Just keep swimming...just keep swimming...just keep swimming..."

First Tournament

My first tournament was one hosted by our sister club in Dawson Creek. For competitors there were a heap of white belts, lots of Yellows, herds of Orange, me solo at Green, no Blues at all, 2 Purple Belts, and a single Brown Belt.

Being the only one my rank, I expected to be put in with the Orange Belts. Never considered they'd put me with the Brown and Purple Belts. I would be two ranks lower then the lowest of them. No way. No way at all. Surely they'd stick me with the group one rank lower....surely.

Nope. My category became Green, Blue, Purple and Brown Belts, with no Blues.

Did I mention it was my first tournament? Man up, you say? There was going to be both Kata and Fighting...I mean Free Sparring. As our club was all White, Yellow, and Orange Belts, and me a single Green, we'd never actually ever learned about Free Sparring. The other club did it all the time. Do I mean we didn't learn the finer points? Nope. I mean I'd never ever done it.

Didn't matter too much for our Whites, Yellows, or Oranges. Every competitor in those groups were from our club, so all were virgins together. I was the sole sucker in a group trained in fighting, but who had never fought.

Oh well. I was in a small group, after all.

Kata time. Kata is solo forms, not fighting. I did my very best Heian Yondan. I was the first in my group to perform, so as I bowed and backed away finished, I was momentarily in FIRST PLACE. The pride. Next up was one of the Purple Belts. Surprise, I remained in first. Next, the other Purple, and I remained in first. Lastly, the Brown Belt. He did I Kata that looked real tricky that I'd never seen before. The bastard stole my Gold Medal...but I did get Silver.  Wooo Hooo. Now time to fight.

I fought first. Typical. Went up against the Purple guy I considered the weakest of the lot. Weak, is a relative term. He held two ranks on me, plus fighting training, and was much bigger than me. The ref called begin. My opponent shuffled forward fast and scored within seconds, landing a punch to my body. Halt. Back to center. Begin. He did the exact same thing and scored again. He got a half point each time, and a full point is an instant win. Match over. Duration about 10 seconds, tops.

My next match was the Brown Belt. Lovely. At least it wasn't over in nanoseconds this time. He scored a half point on me, but was having trouble getting a second to end it early. He seemed to really want to end it, and he got fancy. He threw a spinning back kick. I was a tad unready, as I'd never seen one before. Maybe he expected me to move, or maybe his distance was off, or maybe he was mean. He hit me really, really hard.

Karate sparring is supposed to be non-contact. What is really meant by this is light contact. This means that attacks to the face can only just barely touch the face, and body shots are supposed to go whump, but not really do any damage.

He hit me really, really hard. My lungs decided air was too heavy to haul around, and so they expelled it all and refused to allow any more in for a while. The ref called us back to our start spots. Being a rough, tough Karate guy, I didn't show my distress. Not supposed to. The judges considered Brown's kick. They decided that he'd hit too hard to be allowed a point, but not hard enough lose a foul point.

Brown seemed to really like his spinning kick, as he kept throwing it. Being a gormless idiot, I never figured out how to stop him hitting me hard. He kept hitting just like he had before, meaning they never gave a point for the kick, but also never deducted a foul for excessive contact.

It hurt, and I was really frustrated, but I couldn't stop him. "OK," said my brain that couldn't leave well enough alone, "if I can't make him miss, I'll throw myself into the kick, and when he lands it on me he'll fly out of bounds, and I'll get a foul point out of him for that". Worked perfectly. Sadly, it made his kick land much harder, but I was ecstatic. Also sadly, there is rule about not losing a foul point for going out of bounds when pushed. They considered his kicking my guts as me pushing him out of bounds.

He won by decision. Big surprise. My last match was me with two loses, up against the guy with two wins. He beat me by decision.

No fighting medal for me. My victory? I did better with each match, against progressively better opposition. The cost became evident in the changeroom afterwards. My entire ribcage was a mass of bruising. I looked kinda like I'd been murdered by a motorcycle gang with chains and baseball bats. The most interesting mark was a perfect footprint shape nearly dead center.

It all healed.

Roots

There are a great many martial arts in the world. I've been lucky enough to have dabbled in a couple. Perhaps dabble is too generous a term, but it will do for now.

As a kid, back in the Adam West Batman days, there was a another TV show called The Green Hornet. The main character was a secret-agent type guy with a ten-cent mask, a trenchcoat, and no super powers. He'd punch out badguys one at a time. His faithful sidekick wore a spiffy masked chaffeur's outfit, was Asian, and fought like nobody I'd ever seen before. While his boss would struggle with one baddie, Kato would polish off the other ten or twelve. Can you guess who played Kato?

That was pretty much my martial arts contact in early life.

Spent a few years as a young adult in Canada's Army Reserve. One sergeant volunteered my squad into a Judo group. He had just gotten his Black Belt. Once a week for a month or two, he tried to teach us something, or perhaps tried to inspire us. It didn't take at all. Judo in army boots is just wrong. As soon as we were allowed to unvolunteer, we did.

Next contact was joining Karate in Ft. St. John, and am still involved in that.

Helen and I tried Tai Chi for a few months. Liked it for what it was, but whenever they would try and relate it to fighting they lost me. Neither the moves, nor the philosophy lined up.

Did some informal training in weapons, principally Bo (big stick), and Sai (heavy metal whackers). Liked them, but can't claim to have gained any enlightenment from them.  They did feel way cool.

I've done fencing classes a few times. Poking people with a foil or epee is fun. Pretty good at it for a low-level old guy. Many of the leg moves and stances are Karate-esque. I'll likely do this again sometime. Quite a jolly form of evening exercise.

A summer or two ago, while in Victoria, I trained in Iado. Talk about cool. That's the Japanese art of drawing the sword. Draw, slice slice slice, re-sheath. Always wanted to know something about that. I didn't get enough training time to get any good at it. All the experienced people could make their blades hum through the air, just like a bad sound effects job in a Lord of the Rings movie. The rookies blades were silent. Why couldn't I make mine sing? Decades of Karate practise made no difference. No swoosh. They said there was no trick. It just would take repetition. I understand repetition.

So if you try a martial art, and you don't make a swoosh. Remember...
...repetition.