Karate Tales of a 37 Year-Old White Belt

First Karate Tournament

Growing up, I never thought of myself as a sportsman. I rode my bike, played badminton occasionally with my mom, and certainly did a lot of swimming as a youth, but I was never involved with a sport except as a spectator. So, when the karate tournaments came up after getting our blue belts, I wanted to make sure my kids got the experience of competing in a sport. At first, I was happy to just enter the kids into the tournament, but my husband pointed out that we started this as a family, so we ALL need to compete. Hmm…

Before I was ready to jump off of that cliff, I decided I wanted to attend the open karate tournament that our federation sponsors. Master Landry usually runs the tournaments and this one was no exception. Tournaments are organized into belt and age divisions as well as the type of competition.  This tournament had weapons, sparring, forms, and breaking divisions with schools from all over Connecticut. Call me obsessed, but it was fascinating to watch the tournament especially with the variety of divisions. The highlight of the day was when one of the instructors decided that the judging wasn’t fair and approached Master Landry in an aggressive posture. We were at least 100 feet away in the top of the bleachers, and knew he was toast if he continued. Luckily some other black belts stepped in and held her back and escorted him out.

We learned a lot that day: 1) Never, ever get Master Landry mad unless you have a suicidal tendency, 2) When breaking boards, have someone who knows how to hold the board; actually hold the board, and lastly 3) always wear shin guards when sparring. The worst injury that day was when two black belt teens were sparring. They hit each other in the shins at the same time, not once, but twice in the same match; the result was that both were on the ground holding their shins. Until that day, I hadn’t worn my shin guards. Now I won’t spar without them.

 

The next tournament was a month away and was a Cheezic Federation tournament for Forms and Breaking. I decided, What the heck, I’ll sign up for it if the rest of the family does. It didn’t seem that scary, and there might have been an itsy bitsy bit of wanting to prove to myself that I could do well in a competition.

 

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 Come see what I've added to the Karate Forum as a new topic on Tournaments.

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During that month, the instructors were preparing us for the competition which involved prepping us for walking into the ring, introducing yourself to the judges and then performing your form or break. We decided to buy some wood to practice with. Two very large shipping boxes ought to do it; we like to break lots of wood. I decided early on what breaks I wanted to perform and just worked on building up the amount of boards that I could break.

 

At home, I went up to 4 boards for the palm heel and 5 boards for the axe kick, but for the tournament went down to 3 boards for the palm heel and 4 boards for the axe kick. After some nasty attempts with the higher number of boards, I decided that it probably wouldn’t impress the judges if I broken something and had to be rushed to the hospital. My husband couldn’t settle on the type of break he wanted to do until literally 4 days before the tournament. The kids had decided that they didn’t need to sign up for the breaking competition, and settled on just doing the forms. That was fine, more boards for my husband and I to break!

 

Judges are impressed when you show power during a form and one way of doing that is by having a strong beginning yell. Since this is one of my weak areas, I started practicing my yell. After class I would try out different yells while in the car and ask my family what they thought, but let’s just say that I couldn’t even get a flinch out of my husband while he was driving. Then one day I was practicing my form and yelled a profanity after screwing up the form. It was a pretty powerful yell, so I tried out all of the cuss words that I knew while practicing the form. I sounded like a "kick your bottom", "without a backwards glance" Bad A$$. I finally found my yell, but needed to weigh my options here; would the judges be impressed with my powerful strong yell, or offended by my strong words. Since there are kids present at the tournaments, I decided it would have to be my rated-G yell that would have to do. I’ll save my Bad A$$ yell for idiot drivers.

 

 

On the big day, we got there early, paid our entrance fee, and waited and waited and waited. This gave me plenty of time to get extremely nervous and noticed that Master Needham (our top ranking instructor) was judging. I remarked to my husband that I felt sorry for anyone being judged by him. Our littlest was up first and didn’t get in the group that Master Needham was judging.  She performed Pyung Ahn Cho Dan, and yelled at all the right places and performed the form perfectly for her age. Afterward, the judges line up the competitors and say what they ranked. My little sweety beat their pants off and got first place!

Next up was my oldest daughter who didn’t have anyone to compete against in the blue belt rank and also didn’t get in Master Needham’s group. Master Landry ensured the judges that she was able to compete against the green belts, and proved her right. My oldest was performing Pyung Ahn E Dan, and is a natural when it comes to forceful yells and performing karate forms. Not wanting to be bested by her little sister, she had to outperform and ended up getting first place against green belts! Ok, the kids have set the bar pretty high for us parents. My husband and I would never live it down if we didn’t do at least somewhat well. The kids bounded off to go collect their very first trophies.

 

My husband’s division was called next and he didn’t get in Master Needham’s group either. There were a ton of people in his group. While they were organizing his group, I heard my division being called. I wished him well and went over to my ring, and Oh Looky! Guess who I have as head judge!? Master Needham, of course! Just my luck, I was the only one in my family to get Master Needham as head judge. Ok, reality check, I’m competing for the first time at the age of 37 in a sport that I only started 7 months previous against other women who were my age, but were apprentice black belts, red belts, and one green belt, and to top it off my head judge is the top dog in our school.

 

What was I thinking? What was I thinking? Is it too late to sneak off now? Yep, Master Needham just noticed that I’m in the next group of competitors. Rats! Maybe I should use the cuss words. No, bad idea, but it would make me feel better. I sat there with my stomach all twisted up as I saw everyone else perform very difficult forms, and then was called up. Ok, I knew that I didn’t perform the form really well and I attribute it all to nerves, but ended up with 4^th place. Of course, there were only four of us competing in my division. When it came to the breaks, I did better since I was able to pour all of the nervous energy out and break something with it. For breaking, I got 2^nd place which made me feel a whole lot better.

 

Well, the kids stole the stage that day. When I got back to my husband, I found out it’s true that opposites attract. He placed 2^nd in forms and 4^th in breaking. Ok I’ll try anything once, but I’m not all that eager to sign up for another tournament any time soon. I don’t think my stomach can handle it. However, if the kids want to add to their trophy collection, I’ll be more than happy to be the spectator again.

 

- Wendy Austin

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Please keep reading! Below are some links to my past blogs as well as a link to the new community forum where YOU too can post your own comments and experiences with karate.

· White Belt Blogs

· Orange Belt Blogs

· Karate - Martial Arts Community Forum (IMA students and parents have a special area in this forum to discuss classroom ideas.)

Getting the Blue Belt in Karate

On the day of the grading, I wasn’t as nervous as the first grading, but there was definitely a flutter in my stomach. The grading itself wasn’t very memorable except when Grand Master Cheezic demonstrated some of the ways to apply the self defense forms. It was interesting to see that not only was he blocking the punches and advances, but was grabbing the person’s arm as well. I’m assuming that this was to control the situation which makes sense, but since we don’t practice the self-defense forms on another person it’s hard to see how it might help in a real situation.

Once we got our blue belts, there were some adjustments that needed to be made. For my husband, this was the first belt that was “new” for him. Up to this point, he was re-using the belts that they he had received in college. For myself, I was surprised at how long my belt was. I’m pretty sure the belt shouldn’t hang below your knees. During the first class after the grading, I was doing jumping jacks and my belt kept hitting me in the face. Then during stretching, I realized that my belt could stretch further than I could! My belt was going to my ankles; my hands were closer to my shins.

Which brings me to an update on my goals for starting karate; I’ve lost 34 pounds since starting the Institute of Martial Arts. Most of my clothes at this point are either falling off of me or are extremely baggy. When I do buy new clothes, I’m 4 sizes smaller than when I started!

During warm ups, I’m now able to do about 7 push-ups without needing to drop to the floor, and the crunches are definitely easier. Stretching is the only thing that doesn’t seem to be improving during the warm ups. We have one instructor who tells us to grab your ankles or touch your toes while doing a spread eagle. How about shins, is that an option? When we try butterfly stretches, he asks us to put our nose to our toes. Not that I want to smell my own feet, but it would be nice to at least get past my chest. I end up staring at my stomach.

Speaking of my stomach, one evening I was changing for bed and noticed that I had these lumps under my rib cage. This started to freak me out since they were slightly sore and I’ve never had these lumps before. When I asked my husband what he thought they might be, his reply was abdominal muscles. Cool! I’m starting to get a washboard stomach. Ok, maybe not. After feeling all over the rest of my stomach, I realized I’m about 4 cans short of a six pack. Apparently, I need to start doing more of a sit up than a crunch to get the rest of the muscles required for a rippling stomach. Since starting Karate, I have learned more about my muscles groups than at any other time in my life, including learning about some muscles that I never even knew existed. 

One such muscle group is in my toes, they are called the flexor digitorum longus, flexor digitorum brevis, lumbrical and interossei muscles. During every Friday class, these muscles decide that they are out of balance.  So, during any kick, form, or whatever else we are doing in class, they tighten up and cause me to have a mallet toe.

 

I’ve decided that it probably has something to do with wearing high heels all day at work and then going to karate, but I’m determined to not give up the heels. I’ve already started to keep my nails shorter, and can’t see myself wearing anything else but heels at work. Of course, when my middle toe decides that it can’t take it halfway through Pyung Ahn Ee Dan (form five), I always do a quick re-evaluation of my lack of sensible shoes for work. But then again, I like freaking out my kids with my “stuck” toe. It points downward at a 45 degree angle from the big toe for about 1 to 2 minutes. So, for now I’ll just deal with it.

As for my continued karate journey, the last tournaments of the year were coming up, and there was a lot of preparation being done in the school for them. I might have mentioned before that I’ve never been in a sport, and certainly never competed in any sport either through high school, college, or otherwise. So, at the tender age of 37 years old, I was willingly signing up for a martial arts tournament. What was I thinking? More to come on this in the next blog…

- Wendy Austin

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Please keep reading! Below are some links to my past blogs as well as a link to the new community forum where YOU too can post your own comments and experiences with karate.

· White Belt Blogs

· Orange Belt Blogs

· Karate - Martial Arts Community Forum (IMA students and parents have a special area in this forum to discuss classroom ideas.)

Preparing for our Orange Belt Grading

Note: This is referring to the grading when we were oranges belts. For those of you in our class, yes, I’m a bit behind on writing my blogs, but I believe in doing things in sequential order. So please bear with me on this until I can get caught up again.

Each time before a grading, the instructors start to teach us things that you won’t normally think is important, and making statements like “make sure you get your uniform cleaned before the grading”. For the Orange Belt grading, it was how to correctly tie your gup (belt). When the instructor said this, I literally cringed, and my instant thought was “Nooooo! Don’t show us that! Anything, but how to tie our belts.”

To understand this reaction, you need to understand something about my husband. Everyone in our family recognizes that he is a perfectionist. When we were White Belts, he spent many hours coming up with his own form of tying his belt, and made each of us practice this belt tying technique until we got it right (first mentioned in my “First Month of Karate Class” blog). I had this déjà vu feeling wash over me. The kids and I had new belts since we had never been in karate before. So, after learning the knots from the instructor, the tying itself was pretty simple since the belts molded easily to the new method. My husband had kept his original orange belt that he had in college, and let’s just say that it was uncooperative.

No matter how much he cussed at it, rearranged it this way and that, he couldn’t get his belt tied with this new method with both ends perfectly even in less than 30 minutes. After almost being late to karate class several times, we started tell him to get ready about an hour before class to account for his “belt” time. During this time, it really didn’t help that we were having races to see how many times it took us before our belts were even. Our average was about 2 tries; my husband’s average was… well, much more. When we told him that he didn’t need to be a perfectionist, he would disagree and say that he just wanted it to be correct. My oldest said in a Jeff Foxworthy voice, “You might be a perfectionist, if it takes you 30 minutes or more to tie your karate belt,” and then mumbled under her breath, “or just really, really slow.” However, through persistence and determination, my husband was able to make that orange belt behave and got his tying time down to under a minute.

One day, we were privileged enough to have Master Needham teach our class. Master Needham co-owns the school with Master Landry and is belt #12, meaning he was the 12^th person to receive a black belt from Grand Master Cheezic. So, we felt both honored and a bit nervous when he showed up. One of the things that he stressed to us that day was that any monkey could be trained to learn the Tang Soo Do forms, but it takes intelligence to understand how to break them down.

To demonstrate this, he asked us how many moves were in the first count of Kee Cho Hyung Il Bu (Form 1). Most of the guesses were around 3, 4, or 5, and one student thought it was a trick question and said one. If we answered, then he asked us to demonstrate each of the moves to the class. This made us really have to think about it as well as do the movements. Since none of us guessed correctly, he demonstrated that the first count actually has 7 complete moves to it. After that lesson, he expected us to stop monkeying around, and learn the forms like true Homo sapiens should.

This lead to a dozen or more drills on the basic moves that we were taught back in the first month of class, but a much more methodical manner. It was meant to teach us the rhythm of the moves and fluidity. In addition, it taught balance during the kicks, punches, etc. We would start very, very slowly to get all of the parts of the move in, and build up the speed slowly. I have to say that it also helped with building confidence that we were at least learning the basics correctly. I hadn’t really noticed during the class, but at the end of the class, my muscles were literally quivering in my arms and legs due to the intense focus of where you placed all of your limbs. Apparently, it wasn’t just me that noticed that Master Needham’s classes were deceptively difficult. My kids have this mantra now whenever they get a whisper of a rumor that Master Needham might be teaching a class. It goes something like this, “Please don’t let it be Master Needham today, Please don’t let it be Master Needham today, Please don’t let it be Master Needham today, …” You may think that I’m making this up, but I’ve actually caught them muttering this. My husband and I on the other hand enjoy these sessions including the sore muscles that we get the next day.

At the end of class, Master Needham didn’t like the way we did the closing words and clapping. Apparently we were showing too much of our weariness. He said that we needed to shout the words and clap enthusiastically because we deserved it. Ok, I’ll give him that, we did work awfully hard that day.

- Wendy Austin

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If you want to see how it all began, you can go to the blogs that I wrote while being a White Belt. I've placed them in the order that I wrote them for ease of reading. To see the original comments posted by users, you'll need to go to the actual blogs.

· Why Karate?

· First Day of Karate Class

· First Month of Karate Class

· Karate Fever

· First Karate Sparring Class

· Karate and Self Defense

· First Karate Belt Grading

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Karate Kids vs. Martial Arts Adults

For this blog, I’m trying out my new commenting system with a topic that I’m hoping will generate a lot of discussion. “Are kids better at karate and martial arts than adults?” So, if you have an opinion after reading this, please leave a comment and if it is working right, you’ll be able to comment on other’s comments.

Before I voice my own opinion, let me highlight some observations that I’ve had with my family and others in the class. Let’s start with injuries. First everyone in our family has injured themselves in some way over the past 9 months in karate class. Who bounced back the quickest? The kids, of course! Below is a chart of who got injured, the injury and recovery time.

	Who?	Injury	Recovery Time
1	Myself	Knee	5 months
2	Myself	Bloody toe	2 weeks
3	Myself	Bruises from others	1 week on average
4	Myself	Bruises from myself	1 week on average
5	Husband	Pulled Groin	4 months
6	Husband	Bloody and Bruised toe	1 month
7	Husband	Bruises mostly from others	1 week on average
8	Daughter (oldest)	Jammed Toe	3 hours
9	Daughter (oldest)	Bruise on her inner ankle (from snapping out the forms)	3 seconds
10	Daughter (youngest)	Sore Fist (from breaking boards)	1 hour
11	Daughter (youngest)	If she’s got bruises from karate, I can’t tell them from others and she doesn’t complain about them	No clue
Honorable Mention Injury
12?	Husband	Fractured Pinky toe (I stepped on it while he was bowing out of class)	5 weeks

Of course, recovering from injuries doesn’t mean you’re better at karate, but my husband and I were talking about our injuries one day and how they might effect how we’re doing the karate moves. We debated on whether the injuries caused us to not do the moves fully while injured. There is one exception to this…

Breaking boards seems to be something that as adults we love to do. I think it’s because we can’t break things as that would be irresponsible. Given a choice of spending an hour breaking boards or cleaning the house, I’m certainly going to break all the boards that we’ve got before picking up that broom.

My littlest on the other hand has a hard time breaking a board. I would like to think that she’s too much of a lady and doesn’t want to break anything. (“Keep dreaming, Mom.”) Unfortunately, I think it’s more that she doesn’t understand what force is necessary to break it. Force is something we adults know a lot about, like I knew that I needed to get up a lot of momentum to break through 4 boards with an axe kick. It would have been beautiful too if I had hit the boards with my heel. Instead, to my horror, I saw three boards go flying across the room and looked down and realized I had injury #2. My first thought was, Wow, did you see how far those boards flew? Of course, I was just following my husband’s example who did the exact same thing the week before and how he got injury #6. I even think it was the same axe kick and toe that was injured. Did we stop? No! The next day we were both back at the boards, bloody toes and all. That’s what I call dedication.

As for the forms, it seems that my husband and I are more concerned with the details of where we need to place everything (hands, feet, yells, etc). The kids, well, no offense, but sometimes they remind me of rag dolls. My littlest has even been known to wave at people during a form. Sigh.

Which brings me to my next point, who pays attention better and is more focused in the class? Instructors are constantly interrupted by someone trying to bring up a point. Remember, as students we’re suppose to have questions, not statements. Does this deter the kids? Oh no, they have just gotten smarter about sneaking them in. My youngest went so far as to ask one instructor if he was a Valley Boy. Why you might ask? We were all wondering the same thing, until she blurts out, “Well, my mom is a Valley Girl!” Heaven knows what being a Valley girl has to do with karate, but apparently, she just had to share that with the entire class. I’ve decided that instructors at our school have the patience of saints.

Hands down, kids can do rolling a whole lot better than adults. I must have flunked tumbling when I was a younger kid, because I certainly don’t have any memory of how to do it correctly. The kids would go flying into the roll and come out of it totally unscathed. I would cautiously approach the mat, get down on my knees, place my hands just so, and go WHAAP, Plop, and Ugh. Imagine a square trying to roll, and that would be me. Afterwards, I gingerly pick myself up look closely at the mat because I swear that it magically turned to stone during that roll. I’ve never felt so stiff, then the morning after rolling around on that mat which is why I’ve listed injury #4. And we’re supposed to practice this to prevent injury if we’re in a fight out on the pavement? Pl-e-ase, I’ll give myself a concussion if I attempted it on any surface harder than your average kitchen floor.

So, what’s my opinion on who is better? Kids seem to do the most amazing things with relative ease and more carefree about the mistakes that they make where as adults are definitely more technical, but if they do it wrong, you know about it either through facial expressions or some grunting or snorting noise.

What’s your opinion?

- Wendy Austin

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If you want to see how it all began, you can go to the blogs that I wrote while being a White Belt. I've placed them in the order that I wrote them for ease of reading. To see the original comments posted by users, you'll need to go to the actual blogs.

· Why Karate?

· First Day of Karate Class

· First Month of Karate Class

· Karate Fever

· First Karate Sparring Class

· Karate and Self Defense

· First Karate Belt Grading

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A Funny Thing happened on the way to Karate Class …

and other such silliness. Being Halloween, I thought I would give you a treat and talk about some of the funny things that have happened inside and outside of our karate classes.

I think my favorite comical karate class incident happened just the other day. The instructor was showing us where to focus our energy while breaking a board. Noticing that some of us may not be paying attention, he asks, “What am I teaching right now?”

The reply?

“Sir, you are teaching Tang Soo Do karate.” Totally straight-faced as if she thought the instructor had forgotten what he was doing. I swear I saw the corner of his mouth lifted up, and as for myself, I had to hide a smile behind a fake cough. Might I add that this answer was given by a 6^th grader to an older adult, so it’s really hard to say if it was a smart-alecky remark or if she truly feared the teacher was having a “senior moment”.

The next one came from my husband’s own lips regarding his own family who were the only orange belts at the time. We were lining up to do some drills at one end of the room and were getting pushed into the wall. Always the jokester he said that if they squeezed us hard enough, they might get orange juice. The response was an evil sounding cackle from the black belts. You should never give any ideas to the black belts, they just might do it.

Speaking of drills, one day and one day only, we were introduced to “Man Skips”; thusly named due to it’s similarity to skipping, but because this is karate it has to sound tough. Mostly it’s just raising your leg up in a skipping fashion as high as you can get it to stretch out your thigh muscles. There was much giggling and brouhaha over the Man Skips that day which is probably why we’ve never done them again, but what is the most asked for warm-up during class? Man Skips, of course!

While practicing balance, we are told to focus on a spot on the wall to help focus our attention. I don’t know about other Do Jangs, but our Do Jang has quite a few spots on the wall from various kicks, punches, weapon scrapes, etc. Which got me to thinking, so, is it a good sign that the walls are so scraped up or a bad sign? If the walls were perfect, would that mean that you weren’t learning anything or that the students were so good that they never hit the walls? I contemplate these questions as I’m perched like a crane with a block of wood on my knee. I haven’t come up with the answer yet, but I’m sure we’re not done with learning balance yet, so I have plenty of time to ponder this. In the meantime, I focus on the spot that I put on the wall with the Bo staff a couple of weeks ago. J

We have this dummy in class called Bob. You know the type; stern-faced, doesn’t say anything, is constantly getting beat up, and doesn’t stand up for himself. He has no arms, and oh yeah, no waist or legs either, because he truly is a dummy used for practicing our punches and kicks. Well, one day Bob had had enough and decided to fight back. One of our apprentice black belts was using Bob during kick drills. Every time she kicked him, he would rock backwards and then snap back at her and almost hit her in the face. Apparently, Bob was feedup with being pushed around. Now there’s a warning sign, so people know that Bob is not happy with his punching bag status. I think he’s just misunderstood, and eventually people will stop picking on him. 

  

We had to institute a new rule in our car. Most parents have rules like no loud voices, no rough-housing, etc. Not us, we’ve had to implement the “No doing karate in the car” rule. By the way, the rule is not for the kids, but for the adults who are driving. The rule was introduced by my oldest daughter who sits in the front seat during most of our trips home from karate class. I think the rule was instituted about two months ago after my husband showed us his upper block while driving. The car swerved towards the other lane with another car coming, and my daughter proclaimed, “There will be no karate in the car,” and then proceeded to pry her fingers from the dashboard.  She’s pretty strict about enforcing it too. She reminds us of the rule at least once or twice a week. It’s a real bummer, she never let’s us have any fun.

Happy trick or treating!

- Wendy Austin

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If you want to see how it all began, you can go to the blogs that I wrote while being a White Belt. I've placed them in the order that I wrote them for ease of reading. To see the original comments posted by users, you'll need to go to the actual blogs.

· Why Karate?

· First Day of Karate Class

· First Month of Karate Class

· Karate Fever

· First Karate Sparring Class

· Karate and Self Defense

· First Karate Belt Grading

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The Karate Journey

“The goal is important, but the journey more so”

During warm ups, Master Landry put the above saying up on the board. I’ve often come back to that saying since that day. Why do so many people think that learning karate is a journey? I’ve certainly had plenty of comments from people expressing success for my journey. Since I’ve never really thought about learning karate as a journey, I’ve tried to come up with other sports that are considered a journey. Maybe learning any sport is a journey, but I don’t think so. For instance, you don’t tell a young man learning football that the journey is rough, but well worth it. You’re likely to get a blank stare back.

If it’s not about the journey for other sports, then it must be about the goal, and in some sports it’s literally about the goal. What’s the common goal in most sports? Well, to put it simply, to win. Coaches tell kids that winning is not important that it’s the sportsmanship of the game, but we all know that when a team is winning the coaches sing praises. I think the major difference with karate is that it is a deeply personal sport. Sure, when we all do the forms together, it looks really cool; that is if we all do it correctly. But each of us has their own personal weaknesses and strengths that we discover as we are learning karate.

So, how has my journey been so far?

Let’s start with the easy stuff. I started karate to basically get healthier. To date, I’ve lost 25 pounds and can actually feel muscles in my arm! I definitely have more energy and find myself being more light-hearted about my physical self.

Now for the harder lessons…

Sparring, sigh. I don’t know what it is exactly about sparring that makes it so difficult for me. I can and have done a presentation in front of a room full of Executives without a flutter of butterflies, but as soon as they say to go get your sparring gear on, my stomach starts to churn. The good news is that I’m able to keep the giggling down to a minimum. But rather than give up I’ve decided to tackle sparring like I do anything else that I’m not very good at. I study it. I’ve been watching others while they are sparring, I’ve tried to find books (to no avail unfortunately), and to come up with one thing that I’m going to work on the next time I step into the sparring ring.

Additionally, I’ve always thought of myself as being younger. Let’s just say that in my mind I’m really about 27. Within the first month of learning karate, I injured my knee pretty badly, but was sure that it would heal quickly. It didn’t, but I refused to give up the karate. So, I didn’t tell anyone how bad it really was, and was able to convince myself that exercising my knee in karate was helping it to heal. Since it didn’t hurt during karate, it made sense to me.  Really, it only hurt when I sat for long periods (like 15 minutes), and of course was worse the day after karate lessons. After about 3 months of dealing with the pain, I finally went to the doctor.

 

The diagnosis was reasonable. I have a tear in the medial meniscus of my knee which is fine as long as I can maintain my lifestyle without limitations; otherwise I’ll need surgery to fix it (to read up on the injury, I found this site very helpful, http://www.steadman-hawkins.com/meniscus/overview.asp). But, it’s not the diagnosis that made my jaw drop during that visit. It was what the doctor said next that got me.  It went something like this, “This is a common injury for middle-aged people like you and I where your body is not as flexible as it used to be.” When did I become middle-aged? Ok, I admit I’m not 27, but really, middle-aged? Come on.

There were several things that I could have done with this news. The first being to quit karate, but I decided that I’m not quite done with it yet. Not because of my belt level, but there’s this almost spiritual thing about achieving personal satisfaction from knowing that you improved even just a little bit like not bobbing up and down while doing that last form. No one else may notice it, but you know that you achieve a small step along the journey. I guess when I feel that I’ve learned all that I can, then I’ve reached my goal and my journey has come to an end. Until then, I’ll just take it one challenge at a time.

- Wendy Austin

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If you want to see how it all began, you can go to the blogs that I wrote while being a White Belt. I've placed them in the order that I wrote them for ease of reading. To see the original comments posted by users, you'll need to go to the actual blogs.

· Why Karate?

· First Day of Karate Class

· First Month of Karate Class

· Karate Fever

· First Karate Sparring Class

· Karate and Self Defense

· First Karate Belt Grading

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Learning Korean Words

While learning the sparring techniques and the kicks, the instructors started to focus on the Korean terminology. Second languages were never my specialty, and as you may have figured out, my English isn’t perfect either. My eldest daughter on the other hand learned the ending Korean phrases by the third class. At the end of each class, the instructor says something that loosely (and I mean really loosely since I can’t verify it anywhere) means, “Thank you for being my students”, and the whole class responds with something that again loosely means “Thank you for teaching us”. Of course this is all in Korean or at least the Americanized version of it.

I was amazed when she joined in the response on that third class. When I asked her how she knew what they were saying, her response was, “I don’t, but it sounds like ‘Chew my nail’. So, I just say that.”

To this day, I’ve remember that phrase, because, well, it sounds like ‘Chew my nail’, and there’s this nice little visual of toes and stretching that I’ve created to go with it.

The thing is that what we have typed on our cheat sheet for Korean terminology is really someone else’s version of what they think the word would sound like phonetically. This doesn’t really help me much since I don’t learn new words by sounding them out, and my husband refuses to believe that the class says Charyut more as “Chitty up” rather than “Chariot”. Of course, when I look at it, I think it should be “Char Yuck” or maybe “Cha Rut”.

Don't get me started on the accents. If I use my southern drawl, I would say, “Char y’up”, or the British accent would make it “Chaa ye up”. So, my daughter helped out again by putting together what she thought she heard them saying in class. Below is a chart of the phonetic word, the Korean symbol, what the real English definition is and then what my daughter thinks it sounds like in English words.

Korean Word Phonetically	Korean symbol	English definition	Closest English words
Charyut	주의	Attention	Chitty up
Kyung Yet	활	Bow	Ken yea
Jhoon Bee or Joon Bee	준비되어 있는	Ready	June Bee or Soon to be
Ba Ro	반환	Return	Peru
Shio	이완하십시오	Relax	Shino (from Naruto) or Show
Anjo	앉으십시오	Sit	On Joe
Do Jang or Dojang	훈련 홀	Training Hall	Dough Jan
Do Bok or Do Bahk	제복	Uniform	Do Back
Dee	벨트	Belt	D
Ki-hap	고함	Yell	Key up
Mahk Kee	구획	Block	Ma' Key
Kyuk	펀치	Punch	Key Yuck
Cha Gi or Cha Ki	걷어차기	Kick	Chalk Key

I love how kids have a way of simplifying things, and rolling with it. So, we may not be saying it correctly according to a Korean, but at least we know what they mean when they say a command in class.  At home that’s a different story when my husband gives us commands during home practice sessions. We often look at him strangely when he says, “Baa Row”. Although, I have to give him credit.  When we played an elimination game of what the forms were in Korean during class, he was the last of the orange belts standing up.

- Wendy Austin

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If you want to see how it all began, you can go to the blogs that I wrote while being a White Belt. I've placed them in the order that I wrote them for ease of reading. To see the original comments posted by users, you'll need to go to the actual blogs.

· Why Karate?

· First Day of Karate Class

· First Month of Karate Class

· Karate Fever

· First Karate Sparring Class

· Karate and Self Defense

· First Karate Belt Grading

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Black Belt Registering Yourself

At some point, I’ve heard that if you become a certain level in karate then you would need to register your hands and/or yourself as a deadly weapon. I was pretty sure that this was an old wive's tale, but wasn’t positive since so many people mention it when we talk about being in karate. One day while discussing the grading and what happens when people become black belts, our family started to play around with the concept of registering yourself as a deadly weapon. It went something like this…

We went down to town hall and asked where we need to register. The receptionist asks, “Oh, do you want to register to vote?” She said with a smile.

In response, I said, “No, we all need to register including the kids.”

 

“Ah, you have a pet to register,” she said confidently.

 

“No, no, we did that last month for our dogs.”

 

“Ok, you must be talking about registering your car in which case you’ll need to go to the DMV?” she said a bit more warily.

 

“Nope, that’s not due for another 2 years,” I cheerfully said.

 

“Uh, I’m not sure what you want. Maybe you can explain what exactly needs to be registered,” she asked hopefully.

 

“Well, we need to register our hands as deadly weapons now that we are all black belts, but I would think that it would probably apply to our feet as well. They can be deadly, too.” I would explain enthusiastically.

 

“Oh, don’t forget about Dad’s bad body odor, that can be deadly too,” my youngest one pipes in.

 

“In that case, you’d better register Mom’s bottom too. When she gets that thing swinging it’s a lethal force,” the older one chimes in teasingly.

 

“You know. We’ll need to register your attitude as well,” I shot back at her.

 

“Don’t forget about little one's voice. She’s got that ear piercing scream,” my husband would point out.

 

“Let’s not forget about her cuteness either,” my oldest would offer. “It has been known to bring grown men to their knees.”

 

We all looked expectedly at the receptionist who is shaking her head mumbling, "I should have stayed home today".

I’ve done some research on the web regarding this to see if you really need to register yourself, and haven’t found any evidence that you do. However, it seems that we aren’t the only ones with an imagination on this subject. Below is a site with some hilarious commentary on the registering yourself and treating your body as a concealed weapon:

http://www.bullshido.net/forums/showthread.php?t=55546

At this site, I found that the registering thing is just a myth and there are some other interesting Martial Arts myths de-bunked as well:

http://www.blackbeltmag.com/archives/452

Have fun with this one. We certainly did!

- Wendy Austin 

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If you want to see how it all began, you can go to the blogs that I wrote while being a White Belt. I've placed them in the order that I wrote them for ease of reading. To see the original comments posted by users, you'll need to go to the actual blogs.

· Why Karate?

· First Day of Karate Class

· First Month of Karate Class

· Karate Fever

· First Karate Sparring Class

· Karate and Self Defense

· First Karate Belt Grading

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Karate Kicks

No doubt about it. The placement of your feet in martial arts is critical. No matter if it’s during the forms or sparring. This is especially true during the different types of kicks that they teach you in karate. During the month of sparring, we were introduced to various karate kicks and how to correctly execute them. Kicks are mainly used in karate as a diversion tactic, but only if you can get them above the belt. When we first learned how to do karate kicks, I’m afraid I was doing the chicken dance instead of executing a karate kick. You know what I mean; arms flapping crazily to keep my balance, my leg only getting about a foot off the ground, and hopping around once my foot landed on the ground.

At this time I also realized that my right leg is a lot better than my left. One of the instructors mentioned that if you are right handed then your right kicks would feel more natural. That certainly is true in my case, I’ll not underestimate my right kick again. During one of the practices, my husband was holding the kick bag for me. Since we had just finished kicking with the left leg, I was assuming that my right kick would be about the same height, right at belt level (well, maybe a little below that). When I did the kick with my right leg, it went sailing right over the top of the bag. I’m sure my face showed my surprise which quickly turned to pain as my foot came crashing to the floor on the other side. I never knew it would hurt much more to miss the target than when you hit it.

This happened again when we were trying to do pump kicks and the instructor was holding the bag. He had the bag covering his chest and knee; we are after all just orange belts. This time, I went to kick the bag and almost got his face. I felt the edge of the bag on my heel and tried to pull back before connecting fully. I was as surprised as him; of course he now has this impression that I can do that at any time, but I’m sure the stars would need to be in alignment again or there’s a blue moon; whichever comes first.

Being about the same height and weight, my husband and I were often paired up to hold bags for each other. I’m not sure if I mentioned this before, but my husband has taken Tae Kwon Do before, and he is constantly bemoaning the fact that his kicks are not what they used to be. I personally think he is doing just fine. I hate holding the bag for him. It takes more energy and strength to prevent from being knocked over by one of his kicks than doing my own kick. This last time while holding the bag, I was also finding that he was knocking the air out of me with the force of the kick. Way to go, honey!

One of the lessons for learning how to kick went through the actual steps it takes to do a kick one at a time. To do this, we had the use of the wall since the instructor wanted us to go super slooow to learn each individual step. That day is forever imprinted on my brain. For literally 30 minutes we were constantly with one leg or another up in the air for a good 2 to 3 minutes as he went around correcting everyone. That’s when I learned what the Gluteus Maximus is since mine was on fire after that class.

Ok, I began this blog by saying that the placement of the feet is important and I won’t hold you in suspense any longer. To get your side and roundhouse kicks to go higher it’s a matter of physics and vectors. You see, if you twist the foot that remains on the ground by 90 degrees in the opposite direction from where you are kicking, then your hips will allow your leg to go higher. Without that little twist, then you end up with a kick that is, well lame. One more pointer, it’s not just the feet placement, but how you point your feet as well. When doing a front or side kick, be sure to not point your toes and hit with the bottom of your foot. I pointed my toes during a side kick once and only once. Let’s just say it was “punching bag – 1; Wendy with a jammed big toe - 0”. However, when doing a roundhouse kick, you want to point your toes since you hit with the top of your foot. Again, I didn’t point my toes only once for a roundhouse, and it became “punching bag – 2; Wendy with a second jammed toe – still at 0”.

That’s ok. One of these days, I’m going to show that bag who’s really the boss. I’ll come at it with a flying side kick and knock it to the ground. Of course, I first need to do less of the chicken dance and work more on the twist (of the foot that is).

- Wendy Austin

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If you want to see how it all began, you can go to the blogs that I wrote while being a White Belt. I've placed them in the order that I wrote them for ease of reading. To see the original comments posted by users, you'll need to go to the actual blogs.

· Why Karate?

· First Day of Karate Class

· First Month of Karate Class

· Karate Fever

· First Karate Sparring Class

· Karate and Self Defense

· First Karate Belt Grading

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Karate Sparring Month

Ah, the month of sparring, 3 classes a week, 4 weeks in the month, 1 hour each class. 12 hours of putting on sparring gear and getting beat up by little kids and occasionally Master Landry. Oh, and did I mention that we are paying for this abuse, ah, I mean instruction. During most of the early sparring sessions, my only thoughts were …

            Try not to cringe…

            Remember to keep my guard up …

            When can we stop?

In the beginning, I was mostly concentrating on blocking everything that comes my way and trying not to get hit. Unlike forms, sparring in my opinion is mostly instinctual. If you have the muscle memory from doing the forms for years, then you can probably do some of those moves pretty decently during sparring. If you haven’t, then you pretty much are flying by the seat of your pants.

It’s at this early period that your true sparring technique is revealed before the training comes into play. My husband’s sparring technique is that of a Rock'em Sock’em Robot toy. He just comes at people with both fists going straight out and pretty fast. Of course, he gets paired up with a lot of the guys who are as big as he is, so mostly the apprentice black belts and black belts. So, his sparring philosophy was to try to get them before they get him. I’m a little more, ah, wary. Yea, that’s it. I’m waiting for the right opening before I strike.

Most of the days, we would do line sparring where everyone lines up into two lines. Then you face each other in line and wait for them to start the sparring bout. During line sparring, they usually have the low line (lower belts) shift down one and you get a chance to spar with a lot of different partners for about 20 minutes or so. I had one of the kids during line sparring look me straight in the eye and say, “Don’t take it easy on me since I’m a kid.” I almost bent over with laughter, and felt like saying, “Dude, you’ve got nothing to worry about,” but they already started the round and he was coming at me with everything he had.

Sparring is by far the most physically active part of karate. Sparring matches last only 2 minutes, and you would think that 2 minutes of any activity is nothing. Master Landry proved otherwise. She had us doing 2 minute drills where we were paired up with one person holding a bag and the other either punching or kicking the entire 2 minutes. At about the minute mark, you really start to feel it and your kicks start to lower a bit and the punches aren’t as snappy. Let me tell you 2 minutes is forever when you are constantly moving around. It was during these drills that I got two bruises. One from a black belt who kicked below the bag I was holding and got my leg instead and the other from an apprentice black belt who punched my arm when I moved the punching bag at the last minute.

I was up first for the kicking drills, and was feeling really good about how I continued kicking my little heart out the entire two minutes. I’m not saying that the kicks were perfect form, but I was able to keep it up the entire time. When we stopped, I realized how heavy I was breathing, and it wasn’t just me. The classroom sounded like a troop of Darth Vaders; a dizzy, bent over troop of Darth Vaders that is.

Like most women, I don’t sweat, I perspire. Well, after the drills, I actually had sweat roll into my eyes. It took me a moment to realize what it was. My husband’s the one who wrings out his shirts after each class, but today I had sweat rolling down my face, down my back, and rolling down other areas of my body that I didn’t know you could sweat in. Talk about a workout, if you ever need to burn up some calories, just throw on some sparring gear and go a round or two.

- Wendy Austin

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If you want to see how it all began, you can go to the blogs that I wrote while being a White Belt. I've placed them in the order that I wrote them for ease of reading. To see the original comments posted by users, you'll need to go to the actual blogs.

· Why Karate?

· First Day of Karate Class

· First Month of Karate Class

· Karate Fever

· First Karate Sparring Class

· Karate and Self Defense

· First Karate Belt Grading

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