JazzKicker

It's been over 20 years since my last regular training in Hapkido. There was a small club in my town, I was a TSD black belt, and there were 2 Hapkido black belts who ran the dojang, until it changed hands and became a JKD/MMA club, which I stayed with.. Fast forward to present day, I knew one of the instructors was still around, I've been looking for a place to train, and sure enough. I found his business card on a farmer's market bulletin board. We got in touch, and I'm excited to be back at it.

To borrow from the joke about jazz, Martial Arts isn't dead, it just smells funny! I think the kind of people that would have been the hard-core training types back in the day now elect for the MMA/BJJ scene. I was watching some tournament videos on YT recently, and training reels on FB, and a lot of it was cringe-worthy.

I don't know what's currently done in colleges in Japan or Korea, but if you could get a degree in martial arts, I would think they'd have figured it out. At least in those countries things seem more standardized.

I used to do a yearly retrospective and make New year goals in my training log. Last couple of years, it's just been a retrospective, highlights, lowlights, a summary. The goals were always the same, stay in shape, avoid injury, keep the weight down, get out to at least a couple of seminars. Not too specific or measureable. Sometimes goals don't work out, and it's not apparent all at once. I learn from that, too. Running is a good example, an obvious goal is to run a faster pace, a longer distance. I tried that for a couple of years, then plateaued and was troubled by injury. Now I've cut back on it, since I really only took it up more seriously because it was efficient, simple, solo- but I didn't enjoy it as much as martial arts or get the mental benefits. Recently I reconnected with an old training friend, and I've be going to his Hapkido classes. I'm excited to be doing that again, and it's all coming back quickly. My goal is to stick with that.

One part of your story that jumped out at me is you now have an infant and a toddler. It's no surprise to me at all that your karate practice has been disrupted for the last couple of years! I'm a late-in-life dad, my daughter is now almost 6. It completely changed my life's routines, and it changes your identity and what's important, too. I had a hard time adjusting, and went to therapy for a while. Karate may give you inner strength and perseverance, and patterns for coping, too. Parenting takes a whole different toolkit than martial arts provides. If you have 2 kids I don't have to tell you that. Just consider you're in a different club now, it's normal to have different feelings.

This is a timely thread for me, I've been thinking about how and what it means to train martial arts late into middle age. I turned 60 three months ago I don't train regularly in a groups setting anymore- my old gang moved on or aged out, we got together a couple of times before the holidays last year, but it didn't last. I look around for new places to train, but mostly it's kiddie TKD or MMA (and I'm done with rolling, ground & pound). I do solo training and keep fit other ways (running, cycling, walking). Sometimes I ask myself, am I out of shape or am I just getting too old for this? I realize I'm not going to train like I did when i was 35 or even 40. I'm trying to find that Taoist middle way. I see various memes on FB threads of old masters (the ones that aren't fat with a bunch of stripes & patches) and I wonder, how do they train? Who do they train with?

Back when I wore white uniforms, before I learned to go easy on the bleach, I had a heavy canvas gi. As we began kicking in class one night, the crotch of my pants ripped at the gusset seam, front to back. It was pretty drafty after that!

There are, sadly, people who think vaccines are poison, that it's their body, their right to refuse, etc. Well, more of those people are dead now, or were close to it. I think it's quite reasonable for a club to require vaccination. It's not without precedent, after all! I can tell you personally, the boogie man is still out there, I had it last month despite vax'd and boosted. It was not pleasant, for several days, and I'm glad it wasn't worse.

I'm thinking about a fresh approach, that will be more fun and with less self-imposed pressure. That is, not so serious. Just treat training as play, and enjoy it. That flies in the face of both traditional and sports science based approaches, I know. I've done both, for decades! But in the last 8-10 years, I've been on & off, coming back to it but unable to muster the routine, the intensity, that I used to have. Training for the next belt, or a competition. Training for "life and death" self-defense. Or, only train hard, at the most practical things, and forget the rest... it's all so fraught. Anymore, I just like how it feels, to stretch out, punch and kick, the mental space I get into doing forms. Maybe that's enough, right?

I started in Shito-Ryu at the same age and got just as far. Then I went off to college, and hooked up with a Tang Soo Do club. Forms were pretty much the same. I went through the black belt ranks and moved on to other things from there, but all these years later I still do those forms. Have fun with it! And if you get stuck, have a question, now we have YouTube.

Imagine you're walking down a path, and every few steps, you find a lovely pile of pebbles. You pick them up and carry them with you. After a few stops, eventually your hands are full, your arms are getting tired. You love all these pebbles, but you have to put some down. If you want any new ones, you have to put down even more. You put down the ones you don't like so much anymore, the ones that are too heavy or too sharp. That doesn't mean you shouldn't have picked them up to begin with, it just means you're done with them.

when your back heals, run away from that guy! You need to see a physical therapist- but if you have metastatic cancer in your spine, you should talk to your oncologist first. BTW I got an ISSA cert 20 years ago, plus SMAC cert (specialist in martial arts conditioning). It's effectively a mail-order course that in no way prepares you for the kind of client needs you have.

What makes you want to wonder? Because the answer to your question comes with age and experience, while you said, "The only thing understandable is if its taking care of a loved ones or dealing with family issues that can mess a person up emotionally." those are certainly valid reasons, but as I mentioned above, life reveals many others.

I have to wonder how old the OP is and how long he's been involved in martial arts. People come and go. It's a rare person who finds the one martial art that works for them over a very long period in their lives. From what I've seen that's usually because they do it professionally. People "age out", particularly with styles like TSD (those jump spin kicks!). They move away, start a family, find a gentler exercise.

In a word, yes. I have a few far-flung training buddies who are still at it, some I keep in touch with on FB. Most have aged out of it, 'retired'. My brother, in his 60's, does a little Tai Chi. I only know one guy locally, a spouse of one of my wife's friends, who's a Shotokan black belt. Honestly once MMA came along, I think arts like karate were no longer of interest to adults. More than ever, especially with TKD, it's a kid's game.

A reminder not to take either rank or politics too seriously! https://uproxx.com/viral/donald-trump-black-belt-taekwondo/

A bit off topic, but if you are still interested in pursuing a legitimate certification in strength training, you should check out the Starting Strength Coach Certification. It sounds exactly like what you were looking for. Now, it's not an easy certification to obtain by any stretch, but it would be well worth your time. I would probably in the future but I really got in to yoga big time when I started re-exploring my kung fu roots since now that I no longer want to teach a belting system. My focus is stance, posture, flexibility and foundation for boxing and kung fu. Certification for strength training is weird due to covid situation but in the future if I have my own place, I would like to become certified. Standards and certification in any field, from architecture to yoga, are important for credibility, and even public safety. It's just the privately issued ones can be of dubious value. I studied for a personal trainer/SMAC cert many years ago, it was basically a correspondence school. At the in-person seminar I realized that many of the other trainees didn't have much background or education to be remotely qualified. I was just as humbled when I tried to get a job at a gym, and the manager flat out told me he'd sooner take on an exercise science major college grad. This, for a low paying job dependent on your ability to attract clients at the gym. Yoga, I know, has it's 200 hour certifications- which if you think about it, amounts to 2 classes a week for 2 years. That level of instruction wouldn't qualify you as a black belt, let alone instructor, with a credible karate association.

My first dojo, long, long ago, offered shito-ryu karate and judo. The owner was the real deal, from japan, and an Olympic judo coach. My main pursuit then was karate, but i did try judo for a while. It was rough! Top level judokas tossed me around and I got hurt. My sensei's advice was to pick one or the other, that I wouldn't get good at either, otherwise. For your situation, the best thing would be to learn 2 or 3 basic throws and how to do breakfalls well.

I'm sure I'm late to the party, but because I now have a work-issued iPhone, I've discovered a bunch of martial arts podcasts. It's been interesting to hear interviews and discussions,and it's inspired me to train more. One in particular was a very lengthy interview with Patrick McCarthy on Whistlekick.

Since this is a day of retrospective at KF, I think this is a question worth asking. Times change, right? Just like there's web alternatives to forums like this now, there's also so many alternatives and expanded knowledge in martial arts. Indeed, it was 20 years ago I answered this question for myself, "Yes", but not in the same way. The things we do in life, like getting an education, become part of us, and with that, we move on with those skills and experience. There's a Zen saying, "Once you cross the stream, you don't need to keep carrying the boat". And so it is for me- I still practice the techniques, the principles I learned back then, and more. But it is became a basis for me to build on. I come to KF for a reminder of those roots, that the learning is still valid today, even if what I practice now looks different.

My personal goal continues to be, whatever I do for training, to do it 2-3 times per week. On this "Anniversary Day" for Karate Forums, I'm reminded, the most important thing is to show up, to be consistent. The support of others, in whatever form, is helpful in maintaining that discipline. Earlier this year, whether it was shorter days, or weather, or pandemic-related isolation, things like jogging or doing forms in my back yard, I slacked off on. It always hurts more and is less productive to be spotty. Now I'm back running 2-3 times per week, and it feels much better.

About 25 -30 years ago, I researched this question, and additional information has come along since then, too. Even before then, in my college days in the early 80's, I started off in Shito-Ryu karate, taught by a Japanese immigrant who had come out of their college system. When I transferred to another college, i found Tang Soo Do. The forms were essentially the same! Much more high & jump kicks, though, and overall the style is a little more circular, less rigid. So I already knew from experience that Tang Soo Do was essentially karate, I just didn't know the back story. The official story was TSD was "a 2000 year old martial art with roots in China"....blah blah blah, no mention of Funakoshi or the Okinawan history, before Japan, even. Eventually I started learning about other interpretations of karate like Ryu-Kyu kempo, pressure point theory- and I realized there was much more to what I had been taught. Then people on the web like Len Losik, Dan Nolan, John Hancock revealed what they had found out, too. Later, getting into hapkido, and meeting & hearing stories from Korean masters from back then, I realized how culturally these "origin stories' came to be. Honestly, it's probably better just to train, and not get into it, particulalry with Korean masters- it can be a very touchy subject.

Thanks for your long term efforts here! It shows the karate spirit.

My personal experience has been, every school that had a belt system, including ones in the association that I had been part of, didn't want me. MMA, boxing, JKD, they don't care, just come and train.

Even Billy Jack got beat down in that movie. I haven't personally been in such a situation, but several of my buddies and instructors back in the day were bouncers and/or corrections officers. Even when there was no surprise, they were in charge of the situation, they weren't outnumbered, and they had backup, they would still get banged up.