Why did you start karate? Why do you stay?

[AngelaG]

Why did you start karate? What were the motivational factors that made you step foot in the dojo for the first time?

Did karate reach all of your expectations? Did it exceed your expectations? Has it maybe come no where near to fulfilling what you wanted when you started but instead provided you with a whole new set of achievements?

Have your goals changed and developed over time?

What are the good things about your art, and what are the bad things?

[gh0st]

I started karate to lose weight and keep fit.

I stay because I obviously like getting bruises on my arms

Or mainly because I find it enjoyable from a keep fit perspective as I am learning while I workout. I used to go to the gym but just repeatedly lifting weights mostly with people that are just there to show off the fact that they are "in a gym". Karate is something IMO that you do if you enjoy it and want to stick with it so you generally only get people that are interested in doing it rather than just interested in showing off. ;D

[Aefibird]

gh0st said:

I stay because I obviously like getting bruises on my arms

Hey, me too!! ;D ;D
Today's biggest bruise is on the back of my leg, though - a nice shiny black one on the back of my left calf. However, I'm sure my arms will catch up at the next training session and I'll soon be sporting some good ones on my arms again. (actually, I bruise very easily - it's not just that I get beaten to a pulp on a regular basis, even though my body looks like I do).



I started karate because a friend of mine showed me her kata one day. She had recently joined the club and was practicing the white belt form Kihon (also known in some parts as Taikyoku Shodan). I was intrigued by it and went along to try out a session. Well... 5 years and a dan grade later, I must enjoy it... ;D

I have always wanted to study martial arts, but I was never allowed to as a child, even though my father is a Judo Shodan and my brother has trained in Judo and Aiki-Jujutsu, which is something I found very unfair as a child. Anyway, that's another matter...



I stay for many reasons.

I enjoy the training - I find it a good way to maintain fitness and flexibility.

I also enjoy the mental discipline that comes with learning a martial art.

I stay because I like the social aspect of training - my club has become like my family (but without the arguments!).

I also train because I enjoy learning more about martial arts.

I find it soothing, uplifting, enlightening, entertaining (watching the kids trying to do kata is better than Eastenders... lol, j/k), rewarding, challenging, frustrating, taxing, spiritual, physical, emotional, positive, terrifying, disciplined and a whole host of other things besides.

There's probably other reasons why I train too, but I'm too tired to go throught and list them all properly at the moment.

[Karate Resource]

Bumping so our newer members can give their feedback.

KR Admin

[Sasori Te]

I started karate for the same reason that a lot of other people have started. I saw all of Bruce Lee's movies as a kid. He was one of my heros. I wanted to be able to move like that. I gues it just stuck with me in the back of my mind until one day I just decided to do it. It wasn't what I thought it was going to be but I liked it anyway. So, almost 15 years later, I'm still doing it and still learning new things each and every class.

My goals have changed tremendously. At first I just wanted my black belt. Now I just want to know as much as I can. However, I don't think I'm going to have enough time if I had several lifetimes to know enough.

[kev]

I started karate just a few weeks ago. A friend of mine is a brown belt and always talks about it and uses me as a guinea pig to practice his moves on! lol. He'd say things like ' if someone comes at you like this, do this, ha yaaaaa' and proceed to batter me about for a minute or so! This mainly happened after the pub ;D ;D

Anyway, one day he showed me a move or 2 that totally wowed me, i was amazed how simply you could stop and control an attacker. I've never really been involved in violence much in life (touch wood) and TBH i never even knew how to throw a punch properly till i started karate!

I thought it might be one of my usual passing phases and get bored, but i love every minute of every session, and i've all of a sudden become almost obsessed with it and practice kicks, punches and stretches all the time at home. I haven't started any kata yet but i love the look of it and can't wait to start. I'd have laughed a month ago if you'd have told me i'd be posting on a karate forum right now!!

One thing that keeps me going is how good and positive i feel during class. It's great to block everything out and just concentrate. I'm maybe a beginner getting a bit carried away but i now walk down the street thinking what i would do if the guy coming towards me lashes out or what i'd do if i get grabbed from behind or somethin like that. It has definetly made me much more confident in general.

Sorry for the long post i kind of got carried away there

[bunkaiseeker]

I started karate because the club posted flyers at my gym and I felt strangely drawn. Do any of you know the feeling of browsing through the shelves in a bookshop and there's suddenly this book you have never heard of before but you just KNOW that you have to buy it? T'was the same feeling.

Only much later did I remember that I had been very fascinated by martial arts and japanese culture as a teenager and even tried to teach myself karate from a book! I had completely forgotten about that!

At first I was intrigued by the "art" aspect - getting the body to move so precisely. Especially because that is very hard for me (I was the second worst student in class when I started).

But currenly I'm having a deep crisis because my focus has moved more towards realistic self defense and I have the feeling that my dojo can't quite keep up with my expectations. Training with Patrick McCarthy was a real eye-opener for me and then I did more research in this direction and now I have the feeling that while our club trains a lot more bunkai than other Shotokan clubs in the area (this is not only my impression but also confirmed by several guests we have had) it is nowhere near the level I would want it to be.

So, I at the moment I'm wasting more time on the net or reading books and watching videos and DVDs than training in our dojo. Eventually, I want to get a set of very realistic bunkai for each kata and then start to teach kata "the other way round" - first the bunkai as a two person drill and then the kata as a memory aid.

From a fitness point of view I find karate very ineffective - too anaerobic to count as cardio training. And of course the whole system is set up so as to teach you to only use the muscles really needed for each technique - iow. as you progress it becomes less and less effective from a fitness point of view. I used to be very fit going to the gym 3-4 times; now I'm 20lbs overweight doing karate 3-4 times a week

So, why am I staying? At the moment I'm only hanging on because I'm a member of the club's board and because of some vage hope that if I put enough effort into it I might get to move the club into the direction I want to go or set up a club myself one day that does.

[thingy]

Yeh I grew up watching things like the Kung Fu series, Bruce Lee films, The Water Margin, and of course, the best program ever except for maybe The A Team, Monkey.
It was obvious to me I'd end up doing martial arts, just had to wait for a club to open where I lived and then there I was.

The art side is without doubt what kept me going, a persuit to get your techniques to be technically perfect. I'm still damned by the perfectionist nature that stops me ever thinking I'm doing anything right, though not as badly as in the past.

This statement :

bunkaiseeker said:

But currenly I'm having a deep crisis because my focus has moved more towards ..... and I have the feeling that my dojo can't quite keep up with my expectations.

...sadly is the position I'm in. I've been pretty aware for years of having few people to talk to, and having few people that seemed to think anything like the way I did, except for on occasions training with people outside of my usual training circles - the instructor would say something and I'd think "Thank god I'm not the only one to think that".
Now my focus is moving and that seems to have worsened my position. It's very difficult. I haven't been in a position to do much about it recently because life has been a little hectic but I am hoping to do something about it soon.

[thingy]

Gosh, i was censored then.

[AngelaG]

thingy said:

Gosh, i was censored then.

Yeah there are automatics words that are censored on here. I thought I had removed the milder ones but a few must have stayed in. It's funny because sometimes it'll do it even if you are not swearing but a swearword appears in the middle of a word, and you get censored for not swearing at all!

[Sionnagh]

I started a little over 7 years ago because someone talked me into it.

It simply never occurred to me that you could quit. ;D


Mick

[AngelaG]

Sionnagh said:

I started a little over 7 years ago because someone talked me into it.

It simply never occurred to me that you could quit. ;D


Mick

You can quit ??!!!!!

[Aefibird]

AngelaG said:

You can quit ??!!!!!

Really?? No one ever told me!! ;D ;D

[Sionnagh]

Apparently you can!

When I was a newer newbie than I am now I noticed people would join and come to training for a while then most of them seemed to disappear after a while. After a while I started wondering where they had gone. Maybe they were doing different classes and that is why I hadn't seen them? One day I overheard someone else asking about someone who was no longer in the class and the reply of "Oh, they quit"!

Amazing! Apparently you can quit! Who would've thunk it?


Mick

[RDKI]

Being an instructor - NO YOU DAMN WELL CAN'T QUIT!!!!!
;D