help for a beginner in Shotokan

[shotokanbeginner]

All the best of luck to you. If you are only 14, well then without getting into a silly puberty talk, your body is going to be going through some changes right now.... don't be dejected if it somehow feels that your techniques are getting sloppy. Your still growing into your shoes, so to speak, and sometimes it can be a hard thing thing a young man of your age to be graceful on his feet, so don't feel that you're not cut out for karate anymore if things get tougher for you over the next while. Besides, everyone goes through a phase where it seems to them that they're taking 2 steps back.

You are still moving forward.... Just think of it like you're walking backwards for a few steps, you are still heading in the same direction as you always were. Don't let the search for a black belt blind you, it is the journey that karate ( and for that matter life) is all about, not the destination.

Honour, integrity, and time.......

If doing karate was easy all the time, then everyone would do it and all those cats you saw wearing white belts beside you when you started would all still be there.

Being 30, I grew up on Star Wars, and quite frankly, I'm still a junkie ( I build EL and LED lightsabers and everything, LOL), so I'm going to relate a story about Yoda I read in a book once. Yoda was sitting by the river with one of his pupils when the darkness came. There was a latern a few feet behind him, and Yoda reached and reached for that lantern, trying to hook onto the handle with his cane and pull it to him. He tried and tried for several seconds until his student, using the force, levitated the object and it floated into Yoda's hand. As Yoda let out a sigh, his student asked him, "Master, you could have easily brought it right to your hand. Why struggle with it, when you could have done it the easy way?".... Yoda responded by saying, "It was exactly because it was easier that I didn't do it!"

Anyway......

May the Force Be With You....

P.S. Killer Miller had some really good advice. I don't know him at all, but in reading through all these different posts since I've been on this site, it is clear he knows what he is talking about... Plus, he's a Shotokan guy too.

Osu.

thanks for the kind words, I beleive you are correct.

[jakmak52]

I use to feel very awkward and incompetent at first, my instructors were VERY supportive, I took extra classes and had the attitude to never, ever quit. In 1999 I placed 1st at the US open in Orlando, Florida. Enough said. I also started at age 41. You do what you gotta do, and good luck to you.

[NidaninNJ]

Yoda was sitting by the river with one of his pupils when the darkness came. There was a latern a few feet behind him, and Yoda reached and reached for that lantern, trying to hook onto the handle with his cane and pull it to him. He tried and tried for several seconds until his student, using the force, levitated the object and it floated into Yoda's hand. As Yoda let out a sigh, his student asked him, "Master, you could have easily brought it right to your hand. Why struggle with it, when you could have done it the easy way?".... Yoda responded by saying, "It was exactly because it was easier that I didn't do it!"

Naw...Yoda wouldn't say that. He would say "Because it was easier do it that way I did not."

[kihonkai]

Hi Shotokan beginner

i am also farily new at shotokan and i love training.

i had a lot of bother with my left knee when i started. it was agony for the first few months of my training and i thought i had a permenent injury but it got stronger and i now have no problem with it at all so id say hang in there and keep training regularly.

good luck fellow shotokan karateka

steve