Sunday 28 August 2011
Saturday 13 August 2011
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.
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.
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