Not so long ago I turned 42 (in April). If you read The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams it says that 42 is the Meaning of life, the Universe and everything. If you have no idea what I am on about, take a look here : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aboZctrHfK8

 

Not quite sure whether I can confirm that though! But I thought it was worth sharing in any case!

Anyhow I am rambling, back to my blog…….. It took “Deep Thought” in the film seven and half million years to come up with the ”ultimate answer”, I am hoping that it will take less time to reach Black Belt but I must admit at times it feels like it might take this long!

 

Having a birthday tends to make you look back a little rather than look forward, it is at my still relatively young age a chance to reflect on life the universe and karate. A year ago at this time I was Orange Belt and 8^th kyu. I knew nothing about Heian Sandan. Heian Yondan,  or Heian Godan for that matter of fact. Looking back over a whole year is a luxury, you can really see how you have learnt something, developed and hopefully improved (!). But in reality life, and karate for that matter is never that easy, how do you drag yourself from a hard days work and drive 40 mins to go and train?

 

Well this is where the phrase click, click, click turns up in this blog. I tend to try and think that every training is a matter of trying to turn the dial (towards the better). This can be quite simply and if you are in luck, one click in the right direction. For example I battled for 4 weeks to try and figure out how to do that little dive into a cross leg at the first chia of Heian Yondan. I just couldn’t get my two-cell brain to figure it out! Once I did then everything else is just a matter of figuring out the details. Heian Godan was the same, it took me about 5 weeks to get the click in the least sequence where you, as I call it flap your arms around like crazy and do a bit of a sort flying dragon hidden whatsit with your arms. For those of you whom have this figured out you might think this sounds crazy but for me it was THE most difficult thing to figure out!

These were fairly big “clicks” in the big scheme of things but sometimes you can simply go away from training with the satisfaction that you tried your best and hopefully got your body to do something generally good. Other times it can be a bit of aha experience, ie “oh why didn’t I think of that before?” These aha experiences are particularly good in the learning experience.

 

In a way this is the drug of Karate: always trying to reach for a personal improvement. Or as Sensei Björn, puts it “the least you can do is the best, on this day, at this particular moment in time, nothing else matters”. Sometimes, however it seems that my best can be really really good, and other times it can stink! I’m hoping the stinky bit disappears more and more over time!

 

Anyhow grading to 5^th kyu very soon! So we will see whether I’ve managed to assemble enough clicks over the last 6 months to take me to this level!