This week was my grand return to training, to being able to call myself a martial artist once again. Silly to some, or a very low bar to others. A teacher of the arts who is not a practitioner.
Having practiced consistently for over a decade, with the exception of ‘6-months-in-a-back-brace’ situation, there was a sense of loss when the club that had carried me through to black belt became something unrecognisable to some of the core group. Things had changed and there was no denying that. I tried to keep the teachings alive through self-practice, self-study – digesting every YouTube video and article I could find – even teaching my own students, but it seemed a piece of the magic was lost with the passing of our Sensei and the disbanding of our members.
Since that time I floated around MMA classes, Muay Thai classes, some of which I thoroughly enjoyed, some of which helped me understand what to avoid when teaching. Either way, they never stuck. I can’t explain why, maybe the ordered, rigid, probably a touch masochistic, discipline of my traditional karate class was the thing I missed, or the anxiety of wriggling myself into a new family deterred me from giving it a proper go.
So, instead, I did my own thing, reminisced with the gang over Christmas drinks and held the occasional paired training session, and held out hope for a number of years. Today, however, I put my Gi back on to attend the first class of a school opened up by one of us. I marked the occasion by buying a smart new uniform (one that actually fits) and allowing myself to imagine the experience of performing another grading. It felt somewhat metaphorical – as I commit to my work as a teacher and small business owner, I commit more to myself, the things I love and believe in.
Joining the class, I stood in a line, towering over 15-odd young white-belt children, the image objectively comical. Still, I stood in that line with something to prove, the only real judge being me. I put to the test the stuff I had learnt, studied, and rarely practiced amongst others. When the lesson concluded with a hip throw, realising I could still throw a man probably double my weight with proper technique and ease, I left the class beaming. This gradual restoration of self-belief left me to conclude that, most likely, the only person I had conned over the years, was myself.