Sanchin Dachi in the Subway

I recently earned my shodan (first degree black belt) in karate from UWS Kenshikai. Our dojo requires candidates for black belt to submit a short essay describing their philosophy and approach to karate. I am honored to share it with you. Picking up a karate practice in my 40s, I strongly believe that physical fitness and age are not the barriers to this that most people think they are.

—

Osu

When I got my brown belt, I described it this way : “I’ve worked hard on this, but it’s also worked hard on me”. There’s a synergistic cycle of improvement where I put in effort on a thing, and I’m transformed in exchange, which makes it easier to put in the effort.

I first started taking karate in college, and I quit after a few weeks. Out of shape, it was hard, I felt like I couldn’t do it, and I wasn’t encouraged to continue. So I just gave up, and moved on. From time to time, I’ve regretted it. I’ve regretted quitting, I’ve regretted not being in better physical shape. For decades. This is the validation of the correcting of one of my life’s earliest regrets.

At karate class, there is a person who knows how to do karate. I have never felt like my body could be an expert at anything physical, so it must be someone else doing all of these impressive things. That person showed up every week, and learned how to do karate, but didn’t exist outside of the dojo. When I came in and strapped on my gi, it was as if that other person emerged. Over time, they have started to blend together in my mind, and that person began to bleed out into the rest of my life, to take those lessons and make them my own, to accept that yes, I am the person who can do this.

It began when I started to notice that I would stand more naturally in karate stances that had become like a familiar glove, just out and about in the world, both physically and viscerally. I can make my body do this, and be proud of it. The physical changes are astonishing to me. I can balance on one leg at the beach and put my shoes on while standing in the sand, without support. Inconceivable. When I started, I was attracted to the art of movement, but I never would have predicted how much I’d learn to take delight in the physicality of the practice, let alone sparring and the ecstasy of exhaustion. I could use those stances and deflections to move around and be more stable, but I could also apply the mental lessons to other scenarios, and it colored everything. As I progressed, I became more comfortable being a person with knowledge of karate, applied to other kinds of experience.

Savor the time when you don’t know something, it doesn’t last. This was the easiest to adapt, I have always been somewhat of a serial hobbyist — I dive into new areas of interest and consume them until they become part of my background skills that I just then continue to practice and apply, before I move onto the next thing.

Small incremental improvements over time yield tremendous value. I have applied this to great success in the rest of my life. I have seen this pay dividends in my hobbies, especially blogging and writing. When you first start, there is an empty page. It doesn’t have to be filled all at once, but looking back after a year or two of regular and consistent effort to add small pieces, that becomes a body of work. A wall is made of bricks in the same way that a portfolio is made of photos or a community is made of small individual interactions. Repetition of a thing that seems inconsequential on its own can compound its value. Saying hello to someone once is an isolated event, but saying hello every day is a trend. Performing an action once is a throwaway, but doing it regularly is a tradition, a ritual, and eventually an institution.

Push yourself just a little bit more. Be a little uncomfortable. You can’t do 500 pushups, but you can do one, and then one more, and then a few more than you thought you could. As I discovered in my karate practice, going a little bit more often means I can go a lot more than I thought I could. When I started classes, my limit was 3 times a month. When I started to bump that to twice a week, I quickly found I could do 3, or 4, or sometimes even 5 times a week with little difficulty. The limits were not where I thought they were.

I learned to put all of these lessons together to break down problems into smaller bite-sized pieces, and just do the first thing even if it seems like a tiny piece that will never have any tangible results. Inevitably, when I’ve done that, I’ve found that the next few steps come much more naturally and I can get much further than I would have predicted from just doing the starting piece.

• At white belt, I learned to follow along.
• At blue belt, I learned to keep my feet straight.
• At yellow belt, I learned that I could be good at kicking, by kicking.
• At green belt, my fist became a separate thing, and introduced the possibility of speed.
• At brown belt, I found a whole layer on top of the broad strokes — precision and snap, polish, details, and interpretation.
• At black belt, here I am. Here we are.

It’s been drilled into me that the black belt just means “master of the basics” and this is the beginning of the journey. I understand what this means, and yet there’s still an undeniable cultural meaning behind the achievement of the black belt, a shorthand for “I worked hard on this”.

I am not strong, I am not fast, I am a little fit, but by simply doing, I can and will become moreso these things. I can do this. But I didn’t feel like I was a person that could do this, until I showed up to do it and received the incredible support and encouragement of this dojo. For that, I owe an incalculable thanks to Shihan Matthew Fremon, the other teachers who have worked with me over these years, primarily Senpai Hannah Dancy and Senpai Adri Burton, and to the upper belts who have provided inspiration and guidance from further up the river of progression. I hope to do the same for those who come up after me.

Karate, for me, means showing up and doing the work, continuously and consistently. Even when I don’t want to (but mostly, with very few exceptions, I’ve wanted to).

It’s also worked hard on me.

Osu.