One of the clichés about the martial arts in general is that their training is supposed to help you overcome fear, build self-confidence, et cetera. For a long time, I thought that such claims were largely over-inflated; at least, karate training wasn’t affecting me in that way. I didn’t have any fears to get over……
Or so I thought. Behold! Large moment of self-realisation approaching!
Leaving kihon aside, as it’s the foundation of the whole system, I’d always been more attracted to kata than kumite. When I sat down to work it out, I figured that (a) I liked the history behind the each of the kata, as some of them have existed in one form or another for centuries; (b) I liked the precision required for the execution and timing of each move in a sequence and (c) I liked working out possible applications for the various techniques.
My sparring, on the other hand, was tentative and uncertain. Any opponent could easily overwhelm me and I didn’t have the faintest idea of what to do about it. In shotokan karate, we’re trained to stop our blows just at the skin, with little impact. The ideal is a full-power strike that focuses and stops just before it contacts the body. You get to be pretty good at it after a while, but the occasional bruise happens….
So, anyway I decided that I didn’t like sparring. Karate for me could be kihon and kata. It seemed enough.
When Vicky and I moved back to Newfoundland and I started training again in earnest, I found something very odd. I liked sparring. I looked forward to the challenge and found myself working on tactics and techniques, striving to improve my timing, blocking and counter-striking. And I found myself getting better. I wasn’t intimidated anymore and my sparring was improving.
The reason was very simple. I was fighting with my glasses off. Now, I can see clearly about six inches past my nose without my glasses, so I was effectively fighting big white blurs with quickly moving appendages that might or might not be arms and legs.
My previous sparring had always been with glasses on and I realise now that I was tentative because I didn’t want to break them and was afraid to fight without them. After all, how could I fight if I couldn’t see properly?
Turns out it was the best thing that ever happened to my karate (aside from the spinning back kick, but more about that later). At first, my opponents were still all over me; I couldn’t see anything coming and they were flicking techniques off me however they pleased. So I adopted a new strategy; I ignored what they were throwing, since I couldn’t see it anyway, and concentrated on landing my own strikes. I wasn’t thinking about how not to get hit, but how to do some of my own hitting.
And gradually, I started to improve. I became better able to discern what extremities were coming at me in what way, so my defences got better, which in turn improved my offensive techniques and combinations. By far the biggest change, though, was that I wasn’t afraid to commit myself fully to a technique anymore. That translated into better focus in kihon and kata as well, improving all aspects of my karate.
It was removing my glasses that gave me sufficient edge for me to earn my shodan. I suppose it’s a clichéd thought, but I had to become blind in order to see more clearly.
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