Karate

MARTIAL ARTS

In my boyhood I never found a sport that held any lasting interest to me, whether it was summertime sports like soccer or wintertime sports like skiing. I usually returned from the training sessions feeling rather unexhilerated, bored. I was more fascinated with reading books or playing with my computer systems. Naturally, this didn’t have any positive effect on my physical self, and I got caught in a cycle of not being interested in sports and thus not being particularly physical active, and staying inside as a result of this.

Fortunately, I have always been fascinated with martial arts, and when I saw an ad for a beginner’s class at a local dojo I went for it. I approached my first karate training session with mixed feelings. Was this going to be as interesting as I thought and hoped it would be? I knew of course that it wasn’t going to be like the movies and it sure as cream wasn’t. I’m happy to say that I immediately became comfortable with the philosophy and the training patterns of karate, and I’ve been training steadily now since 1993, only interrupted by a period of unfortunate illness and then a year in the armed forces. Karate is now a part of me as fundamental as breathing itself.

If I were to try and describe just what karate is I would say that … it’s about taking control of your body and psychical self in a very profound way. There's just nothing finer.