My friend and I were in our mid-twenties when we decided to join Karate out of curiosity and an emotional spike. Yet on the first day, we stood there hesitantly wondering if we made the right decision. Just like any other workout session, we started, and within a few minutes, we understood that the session was going to be completely different. We felt the difference between what we practiced in college and Yoga classes. After some hand rotation, "What are you doing?" a firm voice came from behind It was our coach, short man with rough hands and gentle look.
"You are here to hit hard, don't be soft." said the coach.
All these years we were told
- "Don't fight with anyone",
- "Avoid scuffle or brawling",
- "Stay away from problem makers",
- "Strictly no violence."
- and "Beware of our surroundings ".
These sentences made us grow safe and well. In the very first minute, we realized our principles were flipped. We were amused, even though we were aware that we were in martial class, being demanded to be tough on the first day was a real surprise for us. As we were in our mid-twenties, under the assumption that coaching would gradually get tougher. We completed the first day...!
Being raised by protective parents, we had to start the Karate late in life.
So that we don't get into fights, ego clashes, or carried away by the pride of self-strength. Yes, we were in the job after a lot of struggles, we understood that lots and lots of people are more talented than us in millions of ways. We slowly started excelling in the warmups in a week, as demanded by our coach.
Here comes the surprise, leg exercise! In the gym or day-to-day life, legs are less focused by everyone and the same is with us. The initial leg movements were simple), it was as if the leg muscles were dancing to joyous jazz music. On Week 2 Day 3, after letting us enjoy the comfort, Coach raised the bar slowly but firmly "All good! ok, you are comfortable with leg movements now, great.! Now try to do a leg hold", "Master...!", "Yes", "Repeat leg movement above your head", no option left slowly we started to raise our leg above the shoulder after every cm raise, what we heard was, "Higher" "Raise above" "Imagine the target above your head" after 7th rep "ah" something happened to my thigh muscle. After that, I had to drag my leg and walk. The next day, seeing me sitting on the beach with a painful leg my coach came close to me and gave me a gentle oil massage to make me feel better.
After doing some warmup, we started training on kicks. I was eagerly waiting to do my first kick. I was given a strong and passive opponent – a 15-year-old tree. I was struggling there to properly hit my first kick, my coach came and just smiled at us, saying "Long way to go.! Don't struggle with basics, you can do it, keenly observe", he started to demonstrate how to kick. After 3 to 4 tries we did it, and he gave me a friendly pat on my shoulder, I can still feel it.
After bringing in a mindset change, flexibility in the body, meeting all requirements, and focusing on the unfocused for months and months, still he felt a void.
Our left side, for anything every time we mostly use the right hand only unless the situation demands it. In that session, he demanded that no part should be left dysfunctional.
may it be in the body or organization, we should try for a similar push, a similar impact then only we can achieve over the long run. He ensured that we didn't overstress left side usage, yet we put in the right effort to create the same impact, and we slowly became ambidextrous, at least for Karate.
Slowly we witnessed our skills getting better month by month Here and there we fell back, as prey to our errors. Yet the changes we saw within us were astonishing. When we turned back, we could see what was more than being humble and practicing the art with principle.
With that satisfaction, we moved on to the main portion of Karate 'Kata', In layman’s terms, the punches, the blocks, and the kicks are words. We can learn many intriguing words or basic actions, and we may use them well individually as a sequence. The main challenge here is you put all the individual sequences well in a cogent order, so it creates an intended impact. This is like delivering a short story that handles that scenario well.
The coach came and demonstrated a kata, and we were able to grasp it to a certain level. But we failed to finish to repeat after him. We kept trying, but still, we couldn’t make much progress. Though we were in our mid-twenties, we felt the uncomfortable situation and became anxious. Later our coach understood that we were becoming anxious, it's quite a natural thing of the body. He stopped us there and started breaking down the sequence into small chunks so that we could gulp the learnings properly. Thereafter we tried the chunks properly. It was almost like writing two to 3 sentences in a meaningful order and later we chained all the chunks together Viola! We made our very first paragraph with good impact... Yes, we did our first Kata!!!
We are now into the new dimension of martial arts and looking forward to the next level which couldn’t have been possible without the clear guidance from our friendly yet stern Coach.
