Karate and Diet

Another article from Goodin Sensei that actually relates to me, do read it here. I started working for my new company about two months ago. I usually have problem to keep my eyes open when I have to read a lot or maybe do nothing. It’s the case in my new company. I have to read a lot of product references to get a good understanding of the products. As a new guy, I don’t want to be caught asleep in my first few days, so I started drinking coffee again after stopping for quite long. It makes me awake during the day, but the impact was actually very bad to my body and my karate training. I have a bad stomach that can’t really stand absorbing too much coffee. The first two weeks wasn’t that bad, but gradually I started feeling very tired even if I don’t really do anything, I can’t really have a good sleep also, and the worse is my stamina, two weeks ago I almost fainted during the training. I was very much awake, but my breathing was heavy and I was just going through the motion without much energy left. After the incident, I decided to stop drinking gradually. This week I haven’t drink any and I can really feel it in my training. I wasn’t aware that coffee affects my metabolism that much, I was only thinking that it might be because of my new job, but even resting wouldn’t make me recovered. Relating to Goodin Sensei’s article, I wholeheartedly agree with him. Even if we train so hard and regularly, bad diet will not bring us anything. I’m happy that I found the problem, but there’s one thing I found on that day I almost fainted. When I just go through the motion, without power, I was struggling at the beginning when we did sandan-gi. Because I can’t use power to parry the punches coming at me, I have to execute the uke-waza as perfect as I can. In the end, I realized that I tend to do small shortcuts that actually very essential in the technique, but it is actually  something very important not to skip that part and execute it properly. It wasn’t feel great that day, but I gain something important from that experience. I don’t really want to feel it(almost fainting) again, but I definitely will use it as a reminder and reference.

Karate is Primarily a Self Defense!!

If we compare this article by Goodin Sensei and karate that over-emphasizes on point-sparring tournament style training, it is actually something happening in many dojo. I won’t really go deeper about point-sparring, with its pros and cons. It is good in one way, but it is also bad if the training focused only to win points, tournaments, medals or trophies. Karate is first and foremost a martial art. It’s primary intent is for the practitioner to defend him/herself. The physical, mental, mind, recreational, spiritual, social and some other benefit that results from the training is actually, at least for me, secondary. The ability to pacify the opponent in just a few seconds is essential. When a fight started, it will not last for minutes, hours or even days. It might even take one or two second for it to be finished. A blink of an eye or even a hesitation when we execute the technique in a real confrontation can cost us our life!! That’s why kata and the understanding of the kata itself is very important. Kata is like a deciphered military message, it is meaningless for people that doesn’t know how to intepret it, but the message might contain something that decides winning or losing. Kata is also like a time capsule, all the wisdom of the old about self defense, that was forged and collected during those rough times, is accumulated inside the kata. It contain essential techniques, very efficient, effective, battle tested self defense movements. It’s a treasure for us the newer generation. As Goodin Sensei said in the excellent article, if our technique is not good enough to defend ourself, there must be something wrong, and we have to strive to correct it.