New Year Resolutions...Seriously?

I came an article today that took me by surprise. Unrelated to karate, it was about how to keep up new year resolutions. The reason it took me by surprise was that it had been published late in February and I was not expecting to read much about it after January 1st.

I think this highlights quite neatly why I humbly consider the whole concept of new year resolutions utterly ridiculous.The fact there is so much fuss about them in the early weeks of January, with many gyms making the bulk of their money then, and about a month later one does not expect to hear much about them because not much is said about them. It seems to be this idea of setting out to do something, but giving up soon after. I am not criticizing people who do this, I am criticizing the fact it seems to have become a tradition. Because how often do you hear of people sticking to their resolutions in, for example, June. For most, if not all, the answer is never. It seems to be tradition to set yourself a goal and give up on it, not, I gather, with the mentality of being determined no matter what. Even if last year, the goal remained unacheived, people still don't learn from it and do the same thing next December 31st. My Sensei often talks about Einstein's definition of insanity 'repeating the same thing over and over again and expecting different results'.

Although I consider new year resolutions to have very little point, that is not to say I do not apply a similar practice with my Karate sometimes. Usually after a period like Christmas or Easter, where most of us take several days off work or school, I will reflect on how I have been practicing and training, what I need to do more of, gaps in my knowledge that I should research, where I need to alter my mentality, etc... I think it's wise to take the time to look back and evaluate sometimes, just to keep everything 'in proportion' and to know where you stand.

Do I class this as making new year resolutions? No I don't. For a start, I don't just do it in January, but whenever I feel my training and practice becomes disorganized and things need to be reconsidered. I may do it in January if I need to, but with the same mentality of doing it in May. New Year is no better a time to turn over a new leaf than any other point in the year. In fact, one could argue that it's better to avoid turning over a new leaf during the whole 'resolution craze' to avoid falling victim to it. Also, it's small changes and improvements that I normally make, things that are more achievable than the huge goals people often set themselves. If, instead of new year resolutions, once a month we all considered what small changes we could make to better ourselves or the lives of those who are with us on a regular basis, I think that would be more manageable, achievable, productive and therefore less pointless.

It's fair to say that this post is a little off-topic for a blog about karate, but I feel there's an important point to make here about motivation in training. When feeling motivated, it's easy to carry on with karate, but it's an emotion that can't be sustained. So we have to accept that the larger portion of our time training will seem mundane and, at times, it will feel impossible to carry on and that it will be grit determination and a love for what we do that will get us far.

Art or Aggression?

One does not have to have trained for very long, or trained at all, to be aware of the demanding nature of studying a martial art and the kind of mentality training requires. Often, it can be easy to misinterpret  this and have a somewhat distorted view of what it means to practice karate (or any other martial art, for that matter).

When some people find out I practice karate, they look mildly surprised. I suspect this is because I do not normally exhibit the aggression stereo-typically associated with studying such a seemingly combative discipline. I do not posses the aggression or machoism that can be very present in the world of modern karate.

It can't be denied that many individuals perceive karate as a system devoted to combat and glorifying violence. First, I should draw attention to the fact that there is a difference between learning to 'fight' and learning to 'defend yourself''. Self-defense(as karate is often portrayed) is used when faced with another individual wanting to inflict serious harm. The point I want to make from this is that defending oneself is not an act of violence. It is used as a result of the use of violence. It is a hostile world out there where people get hurt. A self-defense system can't be blamed for the violence in this world, it occurs as a result of many other things. It's not ideal to have to harm another being, but for those desperate situations that nobody wants to be faced with, we have no choice if we want to leave the situation and still be alive.

That is an example one of karate's more extreme aspects and how it does not encourage anger and violence. But what about more everyday aspects, such as life in the dojo? I think what can alarm many people about dojo training is how the restrictions that appear in most other walks of life do not seem to be there. Take jiyu-kumite (freestyle sparring) as an example, when else do we find ourselves, (most of us),consciously and deliberately attacking a person who is not a threat? For most, if not all karateka, the answer is never. But in spite of this, I think kumite does very little in the way of glorifying violence. The skill it teaches a person is how to improvise under pressure, not how to harm someone else. Also, before and after sparring, it's traditional to bow/shake hands as a mark of respect, a vow to not give your partner too much more than they can take, to avoid injuring them. It's more an exercise in self-control and trust rather than hurting someone!

Where I train, before we go through basics or katas at full speed, my Sensei often says, 'do it like your life depends on it'. I think this sums up very well the type of mindset needed when doing karate full power. The fact that it's combative motions (kicking and punching etc...) done with this sheer conviction make it very easy to project aggression on to karate. Not to mention that, for once in life, not having to maintain a well-mannered, calm facade is very liberating.

I would be naive to say that the world of modern karate is devoid of aggression, necessary or not. But, in spite of my inexperience, I do feel I make a valid point when I say that we should ask ourselves how big a part of karate do anger and violence really make up.

Teaching Gets the Better of Me

I have been teaching lower grades at my club for over a year now and made the mistake of thinking that I had nailed it, that I had developed all the relevant skills to pass information and techniques to less experienced karateka. Which, of course, is wrong. It takes much longer than I've been training to even begin to get good at any aspect of karate.

It first dawned on me how much of an idiot I'd been after training last Monday. About halfway through, Sensei instructed me to help a 3rd kyu with Bassai Dai. According to the 3rd kyu, Bassai Dai was completely new to him and he had not done it before. Many times, I had worked on Bassai Dai with karateka of his grade who knew the kata already but I'd never had to introduce anything, let alone Bassai Dai to anyone.

 I'm not sure how coherent my introduction  was, I explained what the meaning of Bassai Dai was, then if I remember rightly, the rest was waffle. Some advice to people in my situation: less talking, more karate. Unless you have amazing improvisation skills, you will find your mind blank and feel put on the spot if you attempt a longer verbal introduction like I made the mistake of doing. The chances are, it will come out incoherently and the student will gain nothing from it. That 3rd kyu was there to train, not to listen to some awkward, inexperienced dan grade. I't worth bearing this in mind for any student/s you end up teaching. A better option is to go through whatever you are working on with them and fit in explaining points about bunkai, historical context, etc... around it. It's less pressure  from a teaching perspective, it wastes less time and the student/s get/s more out of it. It's also worth remembering that  it's each karateka's individual responsibility to practice and research karate so ultimately, their long term progress is out of your hands.

I need to remember to take it slower and not rush when explaining/ correcting things because the 3rd kyu became quite confused on regular occasions and I hold myself responsible because of my hasty explainations. Another reason I found Bassai Dai difficult to teach is because of its length(about twice that of the heian katas). Is it better to go through the whole thing multiple times, and spend less time on each technique, or break it down, about 6 moves at a time, but maybe not get through the whole kata?

Kata Bassai Dai

But the thing I berate myself for the most is, at the point in the kata where 3 shuto-ukes in kokutsu-dachi and one backwards precede a movement that could be interpreted as a wrist lock, I taught the unfortunate 3rd kyu 4 shuto-ukes forward! The only good thing that happened was when I realised my mistake and taught him the correct way, Which was quite embarrassing. My lack of teaching experience got the better of me.

Karate and Christmas

Christmas is supposed to be a time for love and generosity; a time for goodwill and empathy. Or is it?

Personally, I am of the opinion that this is no longer the mentality of Christmas and it has been reduced to a romanticism. Christmas has become something one can enjoy only if they can afford it. It has become so commercialised and materialistic that very  little of its true meaning  still remains.

Increasingly, Christmas is being seen as an opportunity to make money. The recent Sainsbury's advert that caused so much controversy is a sad reflection of how far businesses are prepared to go to make a profit. In this case, it was trivialising something profoundly terrible, World War One, to try and sell goods. The fact that they value making money at Christmas more than respecting those who lost their lives or were emotionally and physically scarred by the war just goes to show the extent of it! I won't go in to a huge amount of detail about it, there are plenty of articles online that do that.

Another example of  what I'm talking about is the John Lewis advert that is released every December. Yes, it certainly tugs at one's heartstrings, but allow the façade to fall away and you will find a colder motivation which  is using Christmas as an opportunity to make money.

I sincerely hope Karate does not suffer a fate similar to this. I sincerely hope that commercialisation and political ambitions do not replace its true values. For example, the main concern of a Sensei should be his or her students and the main concern of a head of an organisation should be the members of that organisation, the quality of the karate, etc... Regrettably, this is not always the case, instead, people can be in it for themselves with really tall egos. I consider myself very fortunate to be training under a sensei who is not egotistical or in it for himself and for my organisation to be relatively un-political.

Comparable with Christmas becoming materialistic is how karateka can become overly concerned with belt promotions and winning competitions. I am, by no means against sport karate or the belt system. My point is that these are obvious, black and white benchmarks of success in karate and therefore an oddity. Success is never usually in black and white when it comes to karate. Often, its those achievements that aren't in black and white that can be of the most value to us. The fact karate has given me the self-confidence to do things and take opportunities that I would not have done or taken before, taught me so much about myself and life alongside making me a stronger person means more to me than the fact I passed my 1st dan last year. Passing 1st dan was the most obvious benchmark of success out of the examples I gave and it's also probably the one most  likely to make me look good infront of other people, as would winning competitions, but I don't participate in them. To be concerned with looking good to other people and having a false sense of self-importance is to forget what it really means to be a karateka. It's O.K to be concerned about things like passing gradings; most of us are to some extent but we should not let it be the only thing in our training. Because karate is much more complex than that.

We can never replicate the days of Okinawa in this modern world but that is not to say we shouldn't find a way to modernize karate and still do it justice to prevent it suffering a fate similar to that of Christmas.

Always Looking Forward, Never Looking Back

Two months ago, I was on a training course run by my karate association. It was aimed at brown and black belts. For the two hours we were there, we had been split in to two groups according to our grade.

The head Instructor of our association had been the one training the black belts. Towards the end of the two hours, he said, " Just gather around me a moment". We did so.
"Look at you belts"
We all glanced down at the black lengths of fabric tied around our waists, some of which had evidently seen a great deal of training.
" Are you proud of them?"
His question caught me by surprise; it isn't what one expects to be asked by a sensei after training. I don't know if it was just me who was surprised because we all replied with a quiet "oss".

 

 

He carried on speaking, " we all, me included, sometimes put this", he indicated his belt and gi, " on like an old boiler suit. But, when you feel like giving up, because we all feel like that sometimes, remember the blood, sweat and tears it took for you to get to this level; you don't want that to be for nothing"

I felt that his words had a great deal of truth in them. When he talked about the urge to give up, I could really relate to that. I'd certainly felt it several times during my first 9 months as a 1st dan.

Passing black belt did not bring with it the sense of self-satisfaction and enlightenment that I'd often fantasized about as a kyu grade. Instead, I feel more lost and inexperienced than I ever have done since the first time I walked in to a dojo.

It shows how, as karateka, we are always looking forward and never looking back. Because we are always searching for something better or closer to perfection in training. This is an integral part of karate's beauty. It allows us to study it for a lifetime and really grow to love and understand it. The fact what was said at the end of that course surprised me was, I think, because it contradicted this principle. 'When you feel like giving up, remember the blood, sweat and tears it took to get to this point'. So maybe looking back does have a place in karate. When there's nothing to look forward at, ( that urge to give up), the other thing we can do is look back and, from there, possibly find the strength to carry on.

This is a copy of an article I recently sent to a karate magazine. A long time ago, I did a post called 'the difference between wearing a black belt and being one' and I thought to myself that I could talk about  it in much more detail, which inspired me to write the article. Many of my ideas expressed in it are a result of developing them through my blog posts. So thanks to everyone who read them! Enjoy reading this:

The Difference between Wearing a Black Belt and Being One

As a kyu grade, I often wondered why so many karateka stopped training shortly after they had become 1^st dans. Black belt was the point where one could start to make karate their own and understand it at a greater depth, so I’d understood. What would make somebody stop training when they had all of that ahead of them?

 December 2014 marks the end of my first year as a black belt; a 1^st dan. Since my grading, I feel I now have a better understanding of why new 1^st dans give up karate so early after passing their gradings.

The way I see it is that, as a kyu grade, a karateka develops the skills and knowledge so they can begin to make karate their own and take full responsibility for their training at black belt level, with the belt system providing a systematic approach to the vast amount of learning which has to be done before black belt and making it more manageable. One cause of people stopping karate shortly after passing their 1^st dan grading  is relying solely on the belt system and working towards the next belt for motivation, since there isn’t that incentive as a dan grade; gradings are further apart and not as important at that level. No longer motivated, karateka this way inclined give up.

The other cause is  the main focus of this article. Training as a kyu grade is far from identical to doing so as a Dan grade. I don’t recall training with the same burden of responsibility, the same independence or the same mind set that I do now as a kyu grade. One has to train with a different mind set once they make the transition to black belt from 1^st kyu, as training with the same mind set just doesn’t work, with the need to take full  responsibility for training and be more independent as a karateka.

As I’ve recently found out, this transition from one mind set to a different one isn’t all that easy to make; it certainly wasn’t for me. I’d passed my grading, felt the usual mixture of pride and relief but after I’d settled back in to training again, the reality dawned on me. I was at the stage where I could make karate my own and there was this greater burden of responsibility with more independence coming with it. This demanded a different type and different level of commitment and effort from me. I suddenly had this huge thing to live up to, or I became more aware of it. I also became aware that, although I’d passed my grading and had the belt around my waist to prove it, I was still a 1^st kyu underneath it all and yet to fill the role of black belt effectively. This was when I discovered the difference between wearing a black belt and being one.

The fact I’d come  a long way in training, still had much further to go but was unsure which direction to take as I tried to find a way to live up to black belt meant I felt really lost and confused for a while, the first nine months following my grading, for that matter. As I moved deeper in to this wilderness, the change in training,from what I’d known as a kyu grade meant I felt distanced from my experience before black belt, which was more or less all of my experience in karate! It was as if my life as a coloured belt had never happened. Although I enjoyed this opportunity to ‘start again’, as it were, it also caused part of me to feel very insecure about my training. Far worse, was the feeling that my training had ground to a halt, not something I’d been accustomed to as a kyu grade. As a result I found myself, for the first time, fighting laziness and complacency and I gave in to them. I still trained 3 times a week with all the energy and conviction I’d always done but, outside of the Dojo, my personal practice was in a significantly less respectable state.

I hated myself for doing this, for training 3 times a week as if karate was everything to me but the opposite being true in the rest of my life. I felt like I was just messing about on the fringes of karate and not going deeper, staying in my comfort zone. You don’t have to be a 10^th Dan to work out these aren’t ideal traits for a karateka to possess. My training felt like a lie, which I found really unsettling because inspite of the sorry state I’d let my training reduce to, it didn’t mean less to me than it had done before. It still gave me the confidence in myself and life that I hadn’t really had in the same way before starting karate, it was still important to me, so having those things undermined because I felt I was deceiving myself was far from pleasant.

It wasn’t just me I felt I was deceiving, or that it was just my karate training that I’d let down. I also felt guilty when I remembered that there was a certain kind of respect for Dan grades because of the level in training they’d reached. I was not living up to that level and didn’t deserve that respect. As well as myself, therefore, I felt that I was deceiving everyone else too which brought with it a moderate sense of self-disgust. Alongside this, I felt I’d let my Sensei down, after training hard in and out of the dojo, only for it to change after my 1^st Dan grading. The fact my training outside of the dojo had deteriorated but was the same as before during training sessions meant I felt I was deceiving him in that way, which I felt incredibly bad about because if it wasn’t  for him and his way of teaching, I could’ve given up long ago.

I was hating myself for letting my training deteriorate and deceiving everyone, I was feeling daunted and insecure about training as a Dan grade or, to put it more simply, training just didn’t feel like it used to. This, alongside the directionlessness and lack of progress in my karate, meant that it got to the point where I considered giving up karate, which was when I finally began to see the cause of   karateka who worked towards improving their karate rather than the next belt hanging their gi up as relatively new 1^st dans , as I was now experiencing what they had evidently experienced on some level. To be completely honest, it was quite scary when I considered giving up karate because I had never anticipated it happening; I was serious about training and had wanted to make serious progress, not for it to end in this manner. At the time, it hurt to think that I was just going to end up as a karateka who had become a victim of human nature and I would agree with you if you said that I was being unnecessarily proud if I thought that, I’ve learnt from it; nobody is ever immune to becoming a victim of human nature in their training. The fact is I could never see myself stopping karate as I’d feel like part of me was missing. Equally, I didn’t want to end up doing karate but not make any kind of progress for the rest of my life. I did remember the amount of experienced, high Dan grades there were, (and still are), out there who had been black belts for decades and didn’t seem to have trouble making progress and still getting a lot out of their training. Had I missed something if I was, after less than a year of being a 1^st dan, having trouble making progress? I decided it was time to speak to my sensei and try to put my anxieties at rest.

Even when writing this article and reflecting on my experiences, some things I wanted to put across took more than one attempt for me to put in to words in a way I thought was accurate.  At the time when I spoke to my sensei, it was even more difficult to do so as I was still experiencing it and all the emotions that accompanied it and had not had that chance to reflect on it with the benefit of hindsight. I was anticipating having to give a long and awkward explanation but I had just begun talking when he said he knew exactly where I was coming from. This was something of a relief to me, to speak to someone who understood and reassured me that things would improve if I stuck it out. I was also relieved to know he wasn’t disappointed in me even though he had every right to be.

Come mid-July, things did start to improve for me. Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t a huge change, I would not have said, even at this point, that my training was in a respectable state. But I felt that somehow, things had started to move forward again. I can’t pinpoint the exact cause of why this change came about but I think it was something to do with me becoming more relaxed about life. This meant that I could face practicing at the end of a long day because I had the energy, even if I didn’t, it was still manageable because I started to work on breathing properly with techniques and improving my ability to do things slowly which meant I was less mentally and physically tense (something I struggle with a great deal in karate) so I did not exhaust myself at the end of each practice I did. With this happening, I felt myself settle in to a rhythm of regular practice again.

 

I am aware that a karateka does go through highs and lows in their training. I am also aware that what I have just written is not uncommon among 1^st dans fresh from passing their gradings; I think we all experience it on some level at that stage in our training considering it can be a cause of so many 1^st dans giving up. This long and detailed account of my personal experience of it is to shed some light on something, in my limited experience of karate, I admit, is not often discussed. I am not trying to make my experience seem worse than it was by writing about it in a detailed manner.

Although unpleasant while they take place, low points in training do give us something to learn from afterwards and we should take the opportunity to reflect on them so we don’t repeat our mistakes. Considering that things started to improve when I began to relax more, I have realised how much my lack of relaxation in karate and the rest of my life can hold me back. I properly understand it and how much it needs working on now.

Alongside this, I had never before considered the importance of love of karate until it was what stopped me giving up training for good. I might still hate myself for my lack of commitment and effort if my experience hadn’t taught me the place that being hard on oneself has in karate. In many cases, saying to ourselves ‘this isn’t good enough, you can do better’ isn’t a bad idea but sometimes it is. I am finding it easier to make progress in terms of commitment and effort by looking ahead and being positive rather than having a go at myself for the progress I haven’t made. Of course, this doesn’t mean that I don’t self-administer the odd kick up the backside sometimes. 

It’s true, I felt for a long time that it was my lack of effort and commitment that meant I was doing a bad job of living up to black belt and I do still think that in order to live up to black belt, an extremely high level of effort and commitment is required. But consider this: there is always something more we can do in terms of these things, or to put it less optimistically, we will always seem too lazy and not committed enough. My point is that like that perfection of character and technique so often talked about in karate, living up to black belt could also be unachievable because there’s always something more we can do. Some people live up to it more than others, I think, depending on how long they’ve been training and the amount of effort they are prepared put in to it but nobody can ever fully achieve it. But we can do the next best thing: even if it is out of reach, strive for it and gain so much out of it along the way.

 

 

 

 

 

Recently, I was thinking about, in terms of teaching karate, how a teacher's ability to help students work on their weaknesses in training is limited by the weaknesses that teacher has had to work on themselves in their own training. Because how can they give advice or even see it from the student's perspective if they've never experienced it themselves?

I've come to the conclusion that it actually isn't a problem.Studying karate is mainly a process of independent discovery which doen't require an external teacher. Besides, no two karateka are the same and different things work for different people; two karateka might've experienced the same weakness and found different ways to overcome it. Therefore, when teaching karate, it's important to see students, not as 'students', but as independent karateka who can think for themselves. It's important to accept that they're capable of finding ways to work on things which require work in a way that suits them. It would be naive of me to assume that all karateka make the effort to look at their training in this much depth, but only they can control how much they put in to their training. If they don't put much in, then they miss out on the benefits that karate has to offer with nobody but themselves to blame. It would also be naive of me to say that accepting students can work on their training unaided applies in all situations. With minor technical inaccuracies, a teacher often has to demonstrate the correct way of doing something. But a karateka's long term progress is theirs and theirs alone. This is particularly true if it's a teacher like me who dosen't teach the same students on a regular  basis.

Alongside this, the  act of teaching itself is not just a matter of passing on infomation. When I see my Sensei teach, someone who does teach the same students regularly, he's doing more than just passing on infomation. So many of us, myself included, would miss out if he didn't teach in the open way that he did. The effort he puts in to helping each student improve show that that's his genuine aim; he's not in it for himself. The way he teaches dosen't hide the fact that he's passionate about martial arts, which is infectious. If it wasn't for him, I might've given up long ago. I owe him a huge debt of gratitude.

Teaching is not jst a matter of passing on infomation so the teacher's own experiences in terms of that aren't too much of an issue. It's about being sincere in your aim to help them improve their karate and loving and practicing karate in a way that does it justice so it comes through when teaching and students go on to realise the huge benefits that karate has to offer. This is way more than just passiing on infomation; the amount a teacher can help students work on weaknesses within their training is most certainly not limited by the weaknesses they've experienced themselves- I think I've made that point clearly!