Andy's Blog

With the myriad of complications that have been taking up my time this year, it is still surprising that “people” are the biggest complication of the lot.

I made a decision earlier this year.  A fairly radical decision tis true.  The decision was based on a very personal time of reflection, not lightly made, and one that was built upon some quite intense experiences this year.

Am slightly surprised therefore that someone has taken offence.

As my Sensei has said on numerous occassions; “karate is a journey, not a race”.  For some of us this journey takes a little longer than others, wrong turns have been made and our own personal SatNav needs a little tweaking to get us back on the road.

One person’s decision on their readiness for a new grade is not a reflection on another’s.  It is up to each of us, when the question is asked, to answer if we are prepared internally for that next step.  I’m not.

As I said in a previous post, which far better puts across my feelings, than this slightly rambling post;

“I need to stop chasing the next belt for the next few years and practise on becoming a black belt rather than just wearing one“

I made that decision for myself.  I ask that question of my students.  Each of us can only make that decision for ourselves individually and not for someone else…   and that has to be respected if nothing else.

Sepai, or any kata for that matter, should always be done fully enveloped in a gi or at least with some form of top to go with the leg wear.  That rule, at least, should always apply to myself any-ways.

I’ve been lying back on my backside for way too long getting fatter and, somewhat alarmingly, hairier and it was time to get some practise in – especially after my recent revelation… and I’ve been thinking of timings, etc, to get my Sepai stronger and faster.

Find a room with some space in it and step back into sumo stance and bring the hands round in a nice strong arc, step forward and bring your hands together whilst drawing them in.  Step through and strike with your elbow whilst in sumo stance.  Step through again into an almost backwards long forward stance whilst striking a powerful pose…

…the powerful imagery of that pose, that is in your head at least, is finally broken when you notice the mirror to one side.  The pulling of the arms back is not making your pectoral muscles ripple, as you imagine it should be, but pulling up your flabby stomach and finally letting the belted area of your leg wear see the light of  day.

Worse still, when you bring your arms back and execute the outside shuto you notice that your flabby belly area is still wobbling from a move you completed two steps back in the kata.

I half heartedly did the mae-geri kick which only succeeded in making the devil’s own scrotum that is my footwear (flip-flops) sail out through the open door like an exocet missile.  I think the cat screeching in fright and sounds of a car crash was more my overactive imagination and a product of watching far too many cartoons than anything that actually happened.

Next time I do that kata I must remember; no flip-flops and definitely wear a gi…. oh, and no mirrors!

Yesterday, Sunday, was a mixed day for me, flicking between feeling sick to my stomach, angry at chances lost, quiet, melancholic, happy for others, and more darkly somewhat self-pitying.

…and I hate myself for that.

I’ve been reading Gichin Funakoshi’s books lately; namely ‘The essence of karate’ and ‘The twenty guiding principles of karate’ and have found myself wanting.  I think I’ve been so focused, recently, on the next grade that I’ve forgotten what it entails.

The colour of your belt is not a right based on how long you’ve been practising the art, but the culmination and growth of understanding of the principles underpinning it.  This has been proved by a colleague who has just reached that next level and his karate, which is far better than mine, proves the point.

Time is not the measure, understanding and application is.

I think it’s time to get back to basics for me.  This isn’t a throwing-dummies-out-the-proverbial-pram moment, the karate training will go on.  However I think I need to stop chasing the next belt for the next few years and practise on becoming a black belt rather than just wearing one.

Sometimes having the wind taken from your sails, metaphorically at least, is the best thing if not a little hard on you at the time…. time, at least, will tell if that’s true or not.

A new month is upon us and.. oh my tis gonna be a full adventure packed one this year!  June, it has to be said, definitely had quite a few more downs than ups and really took a nose-dive as it approached its ultimate whimper.  The blog, as ever, suffered from a lack of updates but sometimes life is very rude in its attention grabbing; and these really weren’t things I could ignore.

So I start the new month off looking for some ‘new adventures’… let’s leave it at that for the moment, and contemplating a month of pain(s)…. of various unique flavours.

The little buggerage that is cancer is having the local quackery peek, poke and “hmmmm” at it first thing with a view to finally giving it its marching orders;  scalpel and eye-watering equipment at the ready!

Before one can even clench one’s but-tocks at that thought I shall be throwing myself, and number one sprog, into the competitive art of funny poses and grunting in a japanese accent.  I would call it Karate, but that really is doing the fair martial art a disservice… at least on my part.

What’s more worrying is that I shall be pitting my questionable skills against a large number of other practitioners, with some very VERY dark coloured belts, all in the name of becoming world champeeen!

Get that over and done with and I will age an extra year almost immediately… literally!  Nope, not in some abstract sense of the word, I will actually have aged another year.  That is if I haven’t already aged prematurely when number one sprog officially enters his teenagedom the week before.

There’s a bit more to tap out into this post, but I can’t seem to compose the correct combinations of letters and punctuation marks into something vaguely coherent.

Ah well, cometh the end of July and I’ll be pretty much offline for a few weeks; no on-line presence, no work, no karate, no updates, no cancerous lumps bumps ‘n other stuff? no idea… we’ll cross that bridge when we get there though.

First day of the month!

He was a new student but with an impressive amount of previous martial arts experience; 3rd kyu shotokan, 2nd kup Taekwondo and a large amount of Kickboxing whilst in the army.

I, was nervous.

There is always a little part of you, despite all the attempts at being “humble” that Sensei tries to beat instill into you, that wonders how well the karate you’ve spent years trying to perfect would fare against another martial art.

Curiosity got the better of me, that and he was all up for a little light sparring… I also, of course, had to assess what these extra skills, he was bringing into the dojo, would mean for the other students once he started sparring them.

Bloody hell he was fast!  Low stance with fists as you would see a boxer pose with.  Concentrate on the fists, I’ve sparred boxers before, and *POW* a smarting kick to the shins… not a sweep as I thought he was trying but a full on stumble-in-the-dark-shinning-the-coffee-table wallop.  OK, hang back defend only and assess his attacks.

Round kick to the hip, surprisingly low but easily blocked.  *shin smack* Round kick to the ribs, bloody fast, Ooof! *shin smack* Further kicks to the ribs blocked.  He then proceeds to go backwards in long forward stance and strike, leading in with his shoulders, which is both easily blocked and seems very ineffective.  *shin smack* Round elbow strike to the chest.. wasn’t expecting that.. that’ll smart for a *shin smack* while.   All further attempts at that little move were blocked and I had to smile a little bit at his surprised expression when I clip him round the ear, from behind..

Seems that some of the footwork practise is filtering through my dense skull and *IS* actually worth the layer of skin that I usually leave behind in the dojo.

*shin smack*, *shin smack*, *shin FECKIN’ smack*, WILL YOU STOP HAMMERING AWAY AT MY SHIN LIKE SOME LOVESICK OVER-SEXED STILL-GOT-HIS-GONADS MUTLEY!?

Now to be fair I am not entirely sure what his skill levels with all three of his martial arts actually are, and it has been a little while since he last “practised” the aforementioned arts, but I think the karate held up pretty good against the barrage.  To be sure I have a smarting chest bone and my legs feel like they’ve been abused by a LOT of coffee tables, but still got a fair amount of kicks n’ strikes of my own in, whilst blocking a large amount of the attacks.

Before you ask this is not a “Karate is better than <insert-other-martial-art>” post.  Each discipline has it’s strengths/weaknesses and I don’t actually believe one is better, or worse, than any other – it’s just what suits you, as long you do at least one… this is more about wondering whether I was up to the challenge.

Now, if you don’t mind, I am off to smear my legs with liberal amounts of Arnica and no longer wonder what it would feel like to tease a vicious four year old…

However one thing that has been a constant throughout is the joy at teaching a group of awesome people karate, especially seeing them grow in skill and confidence, as well as progressing through their belts.

To make an outstanding dojo doesn’t just require a good Sensei, not that I class myself anything other than OK, but also an outstanding bunch of people who give both 100% of themselves and their characters to make the dojo a friendly place to train in.. and I have the pleasure of having such students *and* Sempai’s.

There are parts of this year I will try and forget pretty quickly, and I hope will not haunt me next year, however the absolute blast I have had teaching at both Corby and Irthlingborough is not one of those.

The last karate classes taught for 2010 have just been completed and not a bigger laugh could be had.  To any students reading this; Guys, it has been an ABSOLUTE pleasure teaching you and I look forward to 2011 …I will also always have this picture which makes me laugh insanely *every* time I look at it (click on it for a larger version)!

As mentioned in a previous blog post the sparring that’s required to progress as a sensei  can be brutal, but is something you feel cheated out of when not given a pasting around the dojo.  Personally, when in these sparring sessions with my Sensei, I only have two milestones on which I try and judge my progress;

1. To try and block more kicks and punches than actually land.
2. To make sensei sweat, at least just a little bit, for all the blood he’s about to extract from my tortured body.

Unfortunately after a little while you tend to lose count of how many punches and kicks you *have* blocked as the ones you *didn’t* take up slightly more of your attention… or start to make you lose attention… and consciousness!  However I do think I saw a hint of a bead of sweat on Sensei’s forehead after our bout, just a hint mind.

I shall take some solace in the fact that his hands and feet must have been slightly irritated from all the repeated impacts on the facial bum-fluff I call a beard.

Update: Sometimes writing in the dead of night makes for piss poor prose and something that maybe could have been written a little better.  The last couple of paragraphs took an eternity to write and even then I wasn’t entirely convinced that what I had written put over what I was trying to…

Next time, wait until a more ‘godly’ hour…

My arms ache.  The back of my thighs ache.  My shoulders aren’t feeling too grand either.  Even my damned eyes are feeling a little peeky!   Essentially easy tasks, like going up stairs, now seem to have taken on epic journey status.

Add to the above list of bodily whinings; my Gi seems to have developed sentience, through the shear amount of DNA sweated into it, and is at this moment in time hatching a cunning plan, with my sparring gear, to escape from my karate bag.

..there is also the very distinct possibility that a number of people have a sneakily taken picture of my nads, in an effort to prove or disprove an old Scottish custom.

Welcome to my first Blackbelt Leadership Conference.  To try and put down into words what I learnt at the conference is just not possible, or needs a lot more space than I am physically able to provide… I did mention about my aching arms didn’t I?

Let’s just say having two days of being in a room full of black belts, of a dizzying array of dans, being taught by Kancho was terrifying and I still haven’t managed to stop grinning yet!  That despite me losing more sweat than is probably healthy and is currently causing the washing machine all kinds of headaches at the moment.

What made the weekend that more special, other than the excellent karate, was the other lessons learnt.  Namely;

• Boom-shakalaka is a power word  …I am still trying to understand *what* a power word is, but I now know what one sounds like.
• All that looks like stone is not necessarily so.
• Mint and Pea should never, and I repeat NEVER, have unprotected sex and leave their prodigy in my soup bowl ever again.
• That the sentence “..let yourself go and feel yourself release” should be a lot more qualified when trying to hypnotise a roomful of black belts; the air extraction units had some trouble dealing with this “release”.
• The smells and tastes forced upon us in childhood have a profound impact on our adulthood; one person’s tinned new potatoes is another persons gristle-laden lamb  (…this is probably the deepest I will get in this blog post!)
• All that looks like chocolate cake is not necessarily so.
• Trying to find a witty retort, or any retort, to someone’s breakfast admission that they were complimented on the pinkness of their anus is really a lot harder than you can imagine.  Just…. don’t go there.
• “Going behind the bushes” had a different connotation when I was younger… boy did I come down to earth with a bump!
• Somebody’s birthday present, next year, will physically bring a tear to their eye… and a look of horror to anyone who witnesses it.
• Wedding guests have THE longest orgy ever… that or the people in the hotel room next to mine were just loudly agreeing with each other and never actually arriving anywhere.

I’m not sure I will get invited to the conference next year, but I bloody well hope so.  It was a real highlight of the year and awe inspiring to watch the higher grades do karate as it’s meant to be done, and watching Sensei get some rich reward for the work he’s put into the region.

..however, for me now I have a date with a so-hot-it’ll-sear-your-skin-off bath and a bed where I don’t have to listen to people humping.  Toodle-pip!

I’ve been away in sunnier climes these past three weeks, and that will be my standing excuse for the lack of any postings on this site recently – you may find that I’m able to make these excuses on an as-required basis throughout this blog; the only constant being my inability to get the wordsmithing juices flowing at a constant rate… that or a mind numbingly boring life!

…actually I fear it’s a combination of the two!

Anyhoo, beginning of a new week and my first senior karate class has just been completed and I’ve received my first black mark on my belt.  Of course ‘completed’ is a subjective term; survived is another one that could be used just as well.

Karate is something that you need to keep plugging away at every week, so even a small time away and you feel horribly uncoordinated. Arms, legs and various other appendages were waggled during the class, sometimes even when they were supposed to!

..oh and the black mark?  Just an indication of some progress in my karate – so a good thing!  Quite how I got it, given the unwieldy state of my moves yesterday, is somewhat beyond me; there’s a *lot* of things that need improving, kicks being chief among them.  I think I may need to impart some of my hard earned cash (‘hard earned’ also being another of those subjective terms) into purchasing one of those mechanical devices for improving ones flexibility.

That's it... a bit more!

Onwards and upwards as I keep saying… and outwards, possibly, as well.

The large yellow glowing object, so very foreign to these shores, has made an appearance in the large blue expanse above our heads.  The birds are out, feathered variety I hasten to add, flowers are blooming and all around are more pale skinny legs than you could shake a proverbial stick at – yes, summer has arrived!  In an uncomfortably sticky way.

I like Summer, I really do, however anything above 18c and I really *REALLY* begin to suffer.  Unfortunately, for some of my colleagues, adding Karate to this “uncomfort” has the frankly undesirable effect of me producing copious amounts of sweat.

This past week has been full on with Karate; a Seminar weekend, teaching classes and attending senior training.  I think I may have lost twice my body weight in delicate perspiration.. or at least that’s what I tell myself.

Ah well, as a great philosopher once intoned, “The path of my life is strewn with cowpats from the devils own satanic herd”… although he probably never had to wrestle with a fragrantly soaked 16oz heavyweight Gi whilst trying to air it.

..and it is this sweatiness that I shall use as an excuse for the black eye I received at the seminar, that or ninjas!  Lots and lots of Ninjas!  That’ll keep my students quiet and not asking why I didn’t “block” the offending punch.

I think this Summer is gonna be a long and steamy one from a karate perspective.  Which’ll be fun, especially at grading time – running around trying to catch wilting students before they face-plant the dojo floor.  I also have the slightly uncomfortable feeling that this coming July grading shares the same  space as one’s day of birth.

*sigh*… ok, time to go and practise my kicks (which are woeful at the moment) and think of some more excuses as to why I’ve gotten the shiner before my students asks any hard questions.

Oh, and a *HUGE* Big Up and best wishes to Libby, Darren, Jackie, Paul and Roy who are off to the Black Belt Grading on Sunday.. You’ll storm it guys!