Passions: Fighting Talk
by Elizabeth Harrin (London)
On Monday evenings I punch people. Actually, mainly it’s bags or the air, but sometimes – in a restrained and respectful way – it’s people.
Sparring in karate trains reflexes and technique. We learn some self-defence applications but holding a martial arts licence means that once you leave the dojo you leave the competitiveness behind. In fact, karate equals discipline. There’s a strict order to everything: how you enter a room, how you line up in the progression of grade, how you kneel, bow, answer those more senior and help those more junior.
I’ve been training, on and off, for about ten years. I’ve studied Wado-Ryu, Shotokan and Wing Chun, although technically the latter is kung fu, not karate. I also spent a couple of years doing Tai Chi. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not particularly good at any of these styles. In martial arts, you move up through the grades by taking exams which showcase your ability to learn set moves in a kind of dance, called a kata, and orchestrated sparring where each partner knows what move is coming next. If you demonstrate that you can master the moves required for the next grade, you get to advance. And you receive a new coloured belt to show your place in the hierarchy.
When I tell people at work that I train in karate, they normally take a step back, as if I could fell them with one glance. That’s not how it works. I’ve only ever reached 6th Kyu – that’s less than half-way to black belt, which, to put it bluntly, is a pretty poor show. Moving jobs and working overseas forces you to join different clubs and take time out, all of which impacts on being able to progress.
Grading is a stressful experience, but it’s a different kind of stress to that in the office. It’s just you standing, while everyone else kneels around the edges of the dojo, the room where you train. The examiners sit at a table at the front and take notes. If you mess up, everyone notices. But walking up to collect a certificate and that next coloured belt makes it all worth while. Even when I collect my black belt (I will, some day), I won’t be able to fell people with a single swish of the hand. Or maybe I will be capable of doing that, but I won’t. Karate is fundamentally non-violent.
I’ve never really got on with sport. I’m not much of a team player and I used all the excuses in the book to avoid exercise at school. I joined the office book club and spurned the staff netball team. Karate is incredibly sociable, but it’s not a team sport. It took me a long time to find something I enjoyed and could be good at, and most importantly, was hard enough on my mind to stop me thinking about other things.
Sometimes it’s difficult to switch off from work, but there is no office problem too large for karate to erase from my thoughts. Doing every technique properly, with the correct attitude, uses all my brain power. It is a great way to keep fit. The warm up is physically exhausting, and then it’s quickly followed by a mentally taxing training session where the black belts keep the lower grades on their toes – literally.
Of all the karate training exercises, kata is my personal favourite. I love putting together a sequence of moves to fight off an imaginary opponent. Getting it right involves deep concentration, and finishing comes with a great sense of achievement. At the moment I’m working on the kata for my next grading. If I need to clear my head from office stress, I think through the sequence in my mind. It’s better than step aerobics for ironing out frustrations, and much better than pounding a treadmill with no sense of getting anywhere. I know where I’m going, and eventually I’ll have earned my black belt.
