My Karate Journey (part 1)

I decided to tell you a little more of my karate experience, after all I did spend twenty years of my adult life in a dojo, and just telling you how I started and why I stopped would be like ignoring the stuff in between, and I don’t want to do that. Karate brought me so much (besides Hubby) that I think it’s only “normal” that I’d want to tell you about it, no?

In karate we have a belt system gradation, after so much time of training you are tested and given a different belt colour. We all start as white belts, pure, innocent and the higher up you get, the darker it gets (I think it also goes with the bruising). I used to tell my students that the more they trained the dirtier their belt got, the closer they were to the black belt.

When I went for my first belt test I was so nervous. Not for the katas (forms). I always liked the technical aspect of it all, but the kumite (fights) was what I wasn’t really looking forward to. I always enjoyed fighting (I blame my dad for that, with him smacking me around and all), but when in a “controlled” environment I was not so comfortable. After my test I went into the teacher’s office where he congratulated me and said “One day you’ll be a black belt”. I laughed in his face: “Me? Black belt? I don’t think so!” I enjoyed training and the friendships I was slowly making. I would come home and practise on my mother. So many times I winded her, or simply hurt her because she was willing to be my practise target. What I would learn in class, I would come home and show her. And try it. Which didn’t always worked as well as it did in class with someone who knew what was coming next.

As a beginner, I did my first competition, and won a second place in katas. It was among all our schools in the Montreal area, a few hundred participants. I didn’t do so well in kumite, but overall I was happy with my performance. Then I signed up for a Karate-O-Thon. We had to do over 500 kicks, 1000 punches and as many sit-ups as we could in 30 minutes. I did 525 sit-ups. My tailbone was raw by the end and I couldn’t laugh for the next few days my abs were so sore. My parents thought I was going crazy. I had found something I truly enjoyed.

I became more and more involved with helping in the office; being bilingual I was able to do the letters for the head-office in Japan. I was asked to do some demonstrations, a few TV shows, I even got a 5 weeks spot in a 13 weeks self-defence show; the teacher and myself showing the exercise, and then the “real life” scene. That was fun. I basically spent all my free time at the dojo (training hall). I would go to school, then dojo, back home for dinner and my home works, do some sit-ups/push-ups before bed. I ate, breathed and lived karate. By the time I went for my black belt test I had done a few tournaments, Karate-O-Thon and six different belt testing. I was the “Karateka of the Year”, for three years in a row. I was nuts!

This is me, showing off my "flexibilty" after my bleu belt test...