As a youngster at school in the 1960’s I had been made to do cross country running, play football, cricket and even rugby. By the time I left, I was convinced that keeping fit was a thoroughly unpleasant and boring process. Luckily, I discovered the sport of racing sailing dinghies, and it saved me from a sedentary lifestyle for the next few decades.
At the tender age of fifty-seven, I was asked to take my youngest son along to karate. His big brother had been doing taekwondo for some years, but young Don had seen a leaflet at school for karate and wanted to try it. My interest had been piqued. Judo had never interested me – too much grappling. With karate, I reasoned, you’d keep ‘em at arm’s length, or even better, at leg’s length, so I went along for a look. Sensei Nicholls was taking the class, and eight-year-old Don had never done anything like it. At some stage, his sister came along too, and both of them took to it. Don enjoyed the Sensei’s sense of humour, and his sister had soon spotted the potential of this martial art for dealing with bully boys at school.
Me, I kind of eased my way in to it. I would drop the kids off, walk the dog, then pick them up at the end. Then we got permission (the dog and I) to sit in and watch. Next lesson, I allowed myself to be persuaded to have a go, and to my delight it proved a challenge to get everything to work at the right time and in the right direction. After mastering Kata Kion, I found Heian Shodan built upon it and felt that progress would be logical and easy. Then there was Heian Nidan with its kicks, stance changes and direction changes to liven things up. If things became boringly simple at novice level, I had only to look along the class to the rarified heights of, say, the green belts, to see the most perplexing moves going on. The Shotokan system meant that I, too, would be mastering seemingly complicated blocks and counters, and I relished the challenge of getting there.
Later on, I rolled in karate practice with dog walks here in the New Forest and used to stop and do two or three katas whilst the dogs looked for rabbits. I remember the astonished expression on one young New Forest pony when I started up, as if to say, “I didn’t know humans could do that!”. However, when you got to the kicks in Heian Nidan, they usually decided the grass was greener round the other side of the bushes. The better you did the kata, the further they moved!
My sailing experience had shown me that so long as there was a mental challenge, I was quite willing to work flat out, if it meant beating the other boats. Sailing at top level is wonderfully complex, and it became plain that so was karate. Furthermore, I began to realise that by doing karate I was getting fitter, stronger and more supple even as my sixtieth birthday was passing by. The discovery that learning a kata is only the beginning was an eye-opener. It is the bunkai, or applications that reveal the depths of the drill. And as you learn more katas, you find more alternative ways of dealing with situations.
But: “you can’t beat Anno Dominae”. An arthritic hip had to be replaced, with the consequence that my sense of balance is black belt on one foot, but brown belt on the other. As the seventieth birthday recedes, I find the creaking joints and soft tissue injuries demand a new approach to training.
“And what approach is that?” you ask. Still working on that one – I’ll let you know when I hit eighty.
I am currently training in Salisbury under Sensei Cole having attained my Nidan at the Winter Camp in Bournemouth in 2022. I am currently aiming for Sandan, but getting there at my age is complicated by working round existing injuries and avoiding new ones!
by Hugh Comer
Nidan, Salisbury Club
