Spodo Komodo

It all comes down to what you are attached to. If all you value in Karate is advancement and getting the next belt then yes, you should probably quit as it will never live up to your expectations. However, I don't think you will have got to a 2nd degree Brown Belt with only grading and glory to spur you on. There must have been something that kept you going for all this time and that is what you need to find for yourself. When you weigh up the pros and cons of training then at the very least you are giving up on some very good exercise. I went through a similar experience, my knees are a mess of bone-fragments and scar tissue after being run over a couple of times and I have a weight problem stemming from repeated use of painkillers and being immobile for about two years. It took me a while to swallow my pride and realise that I needed to go back to the basics and rebuild my practice of Karate. I am now well on the way but a good club and a sensei who pushes me as far as I can go all help. I really hope that you realise there was something else pushing you to go to class after class and that it can push you to do something again, maybe a different style or art, maybe the same style but a different you. Good luck.

I completely agree NN, last night we spent an hour completely taking apart our kicks and kicking as high as we could (uncomfortably) manage. By the end of the session we did some kicks at our usual height (a low-ish chudan for me) and the difference in speed, power and "snap" was really quite surprising. My higher kicks were always quite lazy and sloppy as I was concentrating on height and not so much on form, by putting in a lot of work on the form side my kicks have got higher but more importantly they have got a heck of a lot better. But I could do with a good sit down for most of today

First time around it took me three or four months before I started to get conditioned to even the warmup exercises. I was in pain pretty much all of the time. Like you I had a layoff of a few years and just came back to training at the beginning of last month. This time around I can feel myself becoming used to the training (which is way harder than anything I have done before) far quicker than I did in the past. Hopefully you will find a similar improvement in your ability to addapt this time around.

Looks to me like Taikyoku shodan with the head blocks from Heian Shodan as well. I never met these Kihon Kata when I did Wado but we do them as a warm up on a regular basis at the club I'm with at the moment. I really have to think hard and not launch into Heian Shodan...

The best book on Wado Ryu kata that I have found is Karate Katas of Wado Ryu by Shingo Ohgami. It covers all the kata to black belt in most schools (Pinans/Heians, Kushanku, Naihanchi, Seishan, Chinto) in enough detail to get the gist.

Were you studying another style at the time? I can see the point in not studying Wado at University and Shotokan at home in the holidays but I have never found an unsurmountable problem in spending a few years practising one style exclusively and then changing to another. But then again, being a nomad I have had to get used to being at a dojo for three years maximum before moving on because of work. If it is the difference between practising karate and not practising karate then I would recommend going with what is available rather than lamenting the lack of Shotokan and doing nothing.

Thanks Patrick and everyone. This is a good month for me so far - back in the dojo after several years layoff and now this! <--- Ooh! shiny!

Sorry Patrick, I forgot about this thread! Thanks for the offer but I just don't get on with FarceBook and the like so I'll pass on Google+. Forums are about as social as I like to be when not face to face and I'm not very good at answering people on here

It was explained to me that it was all about feeling how your body reacts when hitting an unyielding surface and compensating as soon as you begin to feel that the power of the strike is being reflected. By becoming sensitive to the feedback from the striking limb it is supposedly possible to punch or kick with a maximum efficiency and minimum risk. A poor technique against a hard surface deflects the force away from the direction of the strike and results in the wrist or ankle bending. I'm not sure I ever did enough of it to feel the benefits and I haven't trained anywhere that has done this since so I can't really comment about it's efficacy.

I did some of this when I did a bit of karate at university in the 80s. It was explained to us that it was a continuation of the progression from sandbag to gravel bag to rock bag. The intention was not to condition the knuckles or to develop power but to encourage good technique and power transference. Maintaining some sensitivity in the arm is key to being able to strike an unyielding surface, just driving through like you would with a heavy bag is a recipe for fractures and pain. We also kicked at an iron pillar to develop a similar sensitivity in the leg. Probably why my knees are held together by string and brown paper these days.

How long for a black belt? About 280 cm, three for a tenner to you chief... Seriously, it takes as long as it takes*, look up Bruce Lee's "finger pointing at the moon" speech (its older than that but he did it so well). It's some of the best advice on advancement there is. *assuming a decent club/school that it.

Really you need to identify and examine why you stopped. Was it burnout, loss of interest, other things intruding on training time, atmosphere at the club? If you don't know why you stop training then you might not be able to avoid it again. Having a routine can help with burnout and loss of interest but if other things get in the way it can be quite detrimental. Planning one step at a time, just looking towards the next grading can get you a long way if your mind responds to that kind of process. I suggest having a think and talking to your teacher, they may have identified things you have missed yourself.

Sometimes it is more complicated than just being a butterfly. I tried all sorts of arts before settling on Karate, none of them really interested me after a short while and I became quite antipathic towards some. However when I came back to Karate I realised that what had put me off it in the first place was not the art itself but the way it was taught in the first club I tried. Once I had that realisation it was natural to re-open my judgement on all those other arts that I had tried and rejected. Finding a martial art is a combination of style, club, ethos, teaching ability, convenience, demographics and all sorts of other things. I'm surprised that so many seem to get it right in the end at all.

The original black belt that I earned is still in its box unworn. I wear plain cotton black belts in the dojo until they get a bit frayed and then I buy a new one (well they are only £3-50 so I get two or three at a time). I have absolutely no time for those who I have seen thrashing hell out of trees, lampposts and building corners in order to prematurely age a belt. If someone wants to wear a belt until it is frayed then that is up to them but I prefer one in a reasonable state myself.

I hate music while training, mainly because I like the music I like but don't want to listen to music I don't like. I hate the music in my local gym and have to wear earplugs while doing my cardio sessions, although I will occasionally listen to Radio 4 (interesting documentaries, drama and comedy). Music while sparring is counterproductive for me, as Honoluludesktop pointed out. I spent my youth playing in various Brass Bands and just can't avoid moving to a beat which makes my movements easily predictable. If a Karate club played music while teaching then I would not go there again.

Almond oil is traditional for sealing swords, although you need to use the sort fit for human consumption rather than the stuff sold for massaging which can turn the blade purple.

I get mine from Nine Circles in the UK, never had a bad one yet. They do bamboo ones for eco-warriors as well. Real solid bokken made from laminated bamboo.

I practice Zen which generally doesn't get involved with the esoteric nature of syllables in the same way that Tibetan practitioners do. However there are a few mantras that seem to help. I practice the Nembutsu (Namu Amida Butsu) daily and sometimes the mantra from the Heart Sutra (gate, gate, paragate, parasamgate, bodhi svaha). It is important to get some teaching on the meaning of the mantra, as without knowing the meaning you might as well be chanting "beans, beans the musical fruit"! For this reason many teachers I have heard advocate using a short affirming phrase in your own language, such as "I am here, this is now" or "clear mind, clear mind, clear mind...don't know". Some people collect mantras and treat them like magic spells, but in the end they are only words.

How many poor kata video clips or pictures of poorly executed stances are there out there? Sometimes the heart can rule the head leading to websites being full of well-intentioned material which does nothing to show what the club is about. It is often the case that the most enthusiastic are the ones with the least to show.

I went to a Karate club miles away (but with a good website) for many years before finding out that there was a supposedly good club within spitting distance of my home but which had no website and only advertised in a free newspaper which is not delivered where I live. I think not having any website whatsoever is a bit of a handicap these days, even if you only have a Facebook page or something.

There have been a few times when people have flung the doors open and issued a challenge to anyone willing to fight. Generally the initator has been sleeping rough for some time and has an odour so strong it is impossible to fight them. The usual response has been to call the police and social services while trying to keep them calm. Apart from the mentally unstable there have been a few people who have come along to a training session from another school to see how things are but they have always been very amicable and resulted in a reciprocal visit to their dojo. I have never come across a serious formal challenge.

I've seen excellent DVDs and I'ev seen abysmal schools and on the whole I think that a good DVD is at least as good if not better than a bad school. I have my suspicions of where the teachers at said bad schools got their training from though... Having said that, they can really help a beginner get through the initial stages of learning an art if used alongside decent face to face instruction. Going to a video is often easier for the newbie than asking a question for the umpteenth time. Kata videos are a godsend for us kinaesthetically dyslexic.

Oh right, in that case they sent me an email telling me all about it which then told me it was closed to new folk for now! The old "look at the shiny thing...but you can't have it" marketing...

If we could choose to wear a grey belt through all grades from the lowest kyu grade to the highest dan I wonder how many would choose to do so? I'll bet the only takers would be a few low to middle grades! The phrase "its not about the belt" is usually taken out of context. It is something to say to the middle kyu grades who are only learning just enough to pass the grade rather than putting some effort into learning the spirit of the art. It is something to counter the arrogance that comes from getting that new strip of coloured cloth to keep it as an indicator of general ability rather than the sole focus of training. I know that in many McDojos the belt system is merely an incentive scheme to keep the customers happy and this is probably where the disrespect has crept in. However, I also know of schools where the black belts train hard and you disrespect them in a match at your peril. In the end if you are at a good club/school and you still don't respect what a black belt means then that says more about you than it does about them. Its fun to be hip and trendy, regurgitating all the magazine articles about how belts don't matter but in the end when you get there you know how much effort it has taken.

It is a bit like the guys who never submit a new set of scorecards for their handicap at golf when they improve. Sandbagging just isn't cricket!