Fitness, a work in progress (And three ideas you should try out to stop fearing the next training)

The biggest trigger for starting this journey through karate has been for me the re-evaluation of the importance of fitness in my life. Two months later is too early to think I've learned much about karate itself, but might be already a good first checkpoint for the fitness status.

I have to say, I am surprised of the benefits I'm already getting after such a short time. For a start, all the problems with my arms and knees are almost gone, or at least I'm not aware of them anymore. New small physical problems spring up every week and later disappear, as they are likely caused by practicing movements and postures that until now have been alien to my body. Incidentally, I even discovered the existence of a few muscles I didn't know were there at all. The encouraging experience I want to share, is the speed at which this "shape improvement" happens. Keep in mind that even if I am not particularly old or overweight, I still started after about a whole decade of life with an office job and zero interest in physical exercises.

Let me assure you that during the first two or three weeks I was truly exhausted after each training session, with my legs feeling weak and hurting for days. But the aftermath clearly felt better and better each time. The turning point came about after three weeks: suddenly for the first time during a training I wasn't looking at the clock and thinking "Oh no, we still have X minutes before I can rest" but instead I was caught by surprise by the final whistle and thought "Oh no, we've already finished today"!

There are still times of course, when an especially hard session takes the toll on me. After we finished the beginner's course and joined the regular class, the first "real" training was so demanding, that I couldn't keep straight while walking or use the stairs without feeling severe pain in my upper legs for three-four days. But the great thing is that the fitness improvement process is addictive, the more I do it the more I want to do it, to the point that now I wish I could train every single day.

There are a few ideas that I believe helped me a lot in the process of getting my body used to a regular physical activity, and especially to heal and become always ready for the next training. So here are some suggestions, based on what I've been doing myself in the effort of getting used to our training weekly routine.

1) Stretching, the ultimate key to shrugging off the pain and stiffness of the day after! It just works wonder, if there is one and only thing you should really do at home between trainings, it is this. And no matter how little you do, it's always useful, even half a minute here and there is going to give you some relief. Make sure you know what and how to stretch: target the muscles that actually need it at the moment, find out what position allows to stretch those muscles specifically (you can also discover these yourself), and remember that you need to pull reasonably: pull hard enough that you "feel" it but not so hard that it hurts. Your awareness is the key to understanding if a stretching exercise is targeting the muscle you really want!

2) Tackle the exercises you hate the most at the training by doing them again at home. No, this is not some kind of masochism or a spartan attitude, it is a very down-to-the-ground tactic: we hate those exercises that are particularly hard for us personally, but by doing them again at home, regularly but at our own chosen pace, we simply get better at them and they become progressively less hard to do, until hopefully we won't hate them anymore when we have to do them in a class. A lot of people hate push-ups for example, and when you're really out of shape even doing 10 of them in a row can be demanding... So how about keeping in mind that every now and then you can drop to your livingroom floor and do a bunch of push-ups? At home, nobody is telling you how many you should do, so do as many as you can before hating it, and then add a couple more to push slightly beyond your comfort zone. This comfort zone of yours grows larger in time, and the amount required at the class feels progressively less and less uncomfortable. The point here is that instead of waiting for this to happen just by practicing push-ups when you have to (at the class), which means to keep hating them for a long time ahead, you can speed it up if you keep the idea in mind of doing some homeworks which, if spread around during the day, won't really annoy you at all.

3) Endure your presence at the class. Do not skip trainings because you're tired or aching (unless there is an actual, real injury of course). Especially in the early weeks, it was common to see people missing sessions, which I normally presumed was because the previous training had been quite harsh for us beginners. But I forced myself not to skip any training because of these reasons, not even a few times when I was actually sick or feverish, and I can testify I felt better as soon as the training started. I still went back to feeling pretty badly after it ended... but the thought that I made it through the training despite the circumstances has been a boon for self-esteem each time. Be honest with yourself however, and do not do this if you have a real injury! If the training makes it feel worse, that means you really need to rest, but if the training makes you forget about it, then you're good to go!

A fistful of secrets

When we were kids, some of us simply loved to watch kung fu flicks on television. In my country, it was common to see particularly bad martial arts B-movies on regional channels late at night, and those of us who had the luxury of a bedroom TV (not yet a giveaway in the 80s) got often hooked on them, and then enjoyed exchanging comments the day after about the impossible stunts and the deadly techniques shown. There was invariably an aura of mystery around those movies which, together with the ridiculous special effects, spread among us the idea that all oriental martial arts featured "secrets" too terrible to be taught openly, and too difficult to learn for mere mortals anyway.

Then came the 90s, and the evolution of home computers and gaming consoles took the fighting games genre to a popularity peak also thanks to a load of fantasy elements. Previously, the fighting games of popular earlier home computers such as the Commodore 64 or arcade cabinets were mostly realistic, as in famous titles like Karateka or Ye Are Kung Fu. But with franchises such as Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat and Tekken, everything became wacky and supernatural. Oddly enough, during the same time the martial arts movie industry became a lot less fantastic (and for my taste, way too boring), being dominated by US-based action movies with stars like Chuck Norris and Jean-Claude Van Damme. The only asian kung fu movies to regularly reach the west were those of the comic-relief genre championed by Jackie Chan.

A resurgence of the fantasy theme in fighting movies came in the early 2000s, both thanks to much improved special effects (see The Matrix trilogy), and to the Chinese movie industry release of a streak of stunningly visual blockbusters ("Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon", "Hero", "The House of Flying Daggers" and more), where once again martial arts were portrayed with a supernatural image.

It's quite evident that through the years the movies and the games have played a huge role in spreading the myth that far-eastern martial arts feature secrets such as uncanny strikes and near-mystical powers like blinding speed, flying, teleportation, elemental powers and anything you can think of... Clearly, nobody can seriously believe in going as far as beyond the laws of physics, but nevertheless a lot of people probably still think that each martial art harbors a bunch of "secret techniques" which allow to push an adept's skills to the human limits, either for defense or offense.

So the questions a karate beginner like me wants to raise here are these: is there really any "secret" at all in karate? And what may the word "secret" truly mean in this context?

Less than a month into the beginner's course, and I am already confident that in fact yes, there is something we can call the "secrets of karate", except that they are not secret at all, if they are teaching them to us since the first day! They are simply things that a clueless outsider of the martial arts world, like I was a few weeks ago, could not have easily imagined before getting into the art. Obviously they aren't nearly as fancy as the stuff of movies, but after all they are actually much more interesting. At least because they are real...

We've already got a bunch of samples in the first few lessons: many, many times as you are learning a technique the main purpose of which is clear, you might be overlooking a series of alternative and non-obvious applications of the same technique. For example, something that is presented as a defensive block may be used as a strike, if employed in a different scenario or combined with another technique. Already in the case of the very first block we've been taught, we've been also shown how to use the same move for breaking free from a grab, plus two different ways to employ such block as an actual offensive move or counterstrike. Conversely, it is also possible to turn some strikes into defenses, or steps into attacks. Even something that is normally only an athletic, non-martial drill can be sometimes turned into a combat move.

Beyond the basic techniques, there is then the whole world of the kata, or "forms": these are predetermined sequences of moves to be performed solo (in the most basic setup). For an outsider a kata may just seem a display of techniques or a "demo" performed by the karateka for an audience, however performing in public is not the reason why martial artists learn the various kata, it's rather just an inevitable consequence of our western cultural need to have a public for pretty much everything (can you think of anything at all that has never been turned into a show?). For a martial artist, studying a kata is first and foremost a method of practicing the strikes and other various techniques in motion and in sequence. However, each traditional kata is the result of imagining a whole battle around the karateka: we see only the person performing the kata, but we should try to picture imaginary opponents around him. In fact, given the defensive nature of karate, the ancient design of a kata might have stemmed from the actions of the imaginary opponents rather than from those of the "protagonist". As such, a kata hides the real applications of each of its moves and techniques, which are finally revealed when the kata is performed in its bunkai form, i.e. with the aid of a few other karatekas interpreting the roles of the "missing opponents". A beholder doesn't easily see those applications from a basic, non-bunkai kata performance. But not even the student himself may see them, or fully understand their potential, until many years of practicing the same kata over and over.

These are the kinds of martial knowledge which I am not ashamed to call "secrets of karate". They aren't really concealed or jealously guarded, but you cannot figure them out without studying and practicing your martial art with qualified teachers. And given the number of examples we've encountered in merely a few weeks, I suspect we won't likely run out of secrets to discover in a whole lifetime of practice.

First impressions

Sometimes a picture...

The Karate Inception

I haven't even started yet, and I'm already in pain.

If you have an office job, ten years of working 9-to-5 sitting in front of a computer screen can make your body age and weaken without you noticing at all. Besides perhaps your over-exercised fingers which can now type on a keyboard at lightning speed, your body got used to staying locked in the same lazy position for most of the day, slowly drifting towards atrophy, until you cannot tell anymore if the sound of rusty hinges when you stand up comes from the old office chair or from your own articulations. This is pretty much where I stand today, and while I can consider myself lucky at least for not being overweight (well, not visibly), this has only made me even less aware of the need for physical exercise.

Eventually the years of neglecting fitness will catch you up, and you can never know how hard it might be. That's what happened to me a few weeks ago, as I had to run fast to catch a bus: it was just a 50m dash in a matter of seconds, but my whole body ached for 3 full days afterwards for the effort! This seemed definitely like the last straw.

Not that I haven't been trying already many sports in the past years, it's just that sticking to anything serious and regular always seems to be beyond my capabilities. I really needed an idea, and a good one. Something that once it was planted in my mind I could not stop thinking about it.

So came the "karate inception" from a friend who's been into it for a while already. I had a very short fling with karate as a competitive sport back in my early teenage years, and for 20~ish years I used to look back at it as an opportunity that was missed once and could have never been resumed. But that friend of mine is very good at marketing and at motivating people. So many were her good points to convince me joining her karate club that she could have continued trying for days, but she managed in just five minutes.

I don't know how it happens for other people, but whenever I have a plan in mind, I always go through a first phase of great optimism. I start thinking of all the potential benefits, which in this case are not just about fitness. If practiced well, there's a lot a martial art can do to one's mental health, for instance improving your concentration, awareness, reactivity, discipline, patience, humbleness... practically everything I miss to be a decent person. Heck, it could even give me back some kind of social life, after years of living practically restricted to office and home (yep, I have toddlers).

Unfortunately after the optimist has spoken always comes the inner devil's advocate, listing down a million reasons for your idea to fail. It starts by pointing at all the hard work ahead, making you wonder: can your body really take it or will it break down in just a few weeks, or maybe days? You anticipate all the possible negative feelings: the physical retribution, the stress of many tests to come and the fear of failing them, the cry for the money spent (compared to other hobbies, a martial art is very cheap, but so am I), the humiliation of being publicly knocked out in combat by single-digit-aged kids, and so on...

It was at this point that all my non-fingers body parts realized that they will actually have a lot to keep up with, and started sending messages of resentment mixed with pleads for mercy. First my wrist gets carpal tunnel syndrome which is the typical injury of musicians, the stigmata of honour for all hard-practicing guitarists: how I begged to have this injury when I was seriously into guitar but no, I get to earn it now that I've put music behind. Next comes the tennis elbow, an amazing feat to get this problem when I practically never succeeded at hitting anything with a racket and having stopped trying twenty years ago. Then in turn: a crippled knee, a twisted ankle, and a forearm which must think it's unfair that there is no specific disease for forearms and thus decides to bump into things and get huge electric shocks on a daily basis. It seems as if my entire left side is declaring mutiny in order to boycott my plan!

But the truth is, you can't revert a successful inception, especially after it has passed the dread "wife's test" and got her approval, though you'll never know how much the hint of a possible future return of a six-pack helped you with that.

So here I am, throughly devoted to test for humanity's benefit what happens if you challenge your neglected middle-aged body with nothing less than a deadly martial art, and sincerely determined to switch from being a couch potato to a belt-wearing, kiai-screaming, B-side-kicking berserker... or otherwise a mashed potato. This blog is here to tell the tale, but let's face it... if it hits me hard, this could really be the shortest-lived blog ever.

"An idea can either define you or destroy you": and in my case, quite literally.