HIS Karate-Do

If someone were to ask me as to whether I ever get emotional about the martial arts and karate in particular, the answer is “Yes”. Now, there’s emotion and there’s emotion. I’m not talking about the following things, which I experience quite often: the feeling of fulfillment anytime a student “gets it right”, or the awe of seeing a great karate technician execute flawless technique, or that feeling of comeraderie one shares with his/her fellow karateka in class, or even the thrills and excitement of a large tournament or a hard examination, etc. Instead, I’m talking about the deep emotional responses that can bring mixed feelings of pride, love, devotion, loyalty, and so on. You know, the kind of fierce, deep feelings that can almost bring tears to one’s eyes, and a strange warming of the heart. As dumb as this sounds, this most often happens if I’m watching a particular movie, which, under the right conditions, can evoke a response from within me. Right now, that old 1960 movie, “The Magnificent Seven”, is playing on my television (hence, the inspiration for today’s note). It’s one of my favorites, and I have probably watched it twenty times or more, over [...]

I guess that the use of color belts, (culminating in the black belt) has been used by karate dojos for nearly a hundred years. It’s apparently something that we adopted from the practices of judo halls, which were formulated in the late 1800’s. Depending upon the organization, the colors and the order in which these are earned, varies; although most every dojo starts with white, and ends up with brown and black belts. In our kyu (color belt) system, there are 10 ranks: white, two blues, two greens, two purples, and three browns. One would think that each rank in the hierarchy represents an equal step forward in time, skills gained, techniques learned, etc. As most karateka will tell you, this is far from true, and differs from rank to rank, from dojo to dojo, and from person to person. In an average dojo, exams are given out every three months or about four times a year. Most folks aren’t talented enough or train often enough to go up a rank every three months. However, in general, if one is training consistently (say, three times a week), he/she might progress 2-3 ranks each year; and in fact, it might take [...]

We all know that saying, “Let’s kick it up a notch.” Basically, it means to try a little harder, to increase the intensity, to be better, etc. It’s such a common sense saying, but as one progresses in karate-do, we find that it becomes harder and harder to “kick it up a notch”. The better one gets, the more difficult it is to get better. One of the ways to motivate folks to hang in there, when the road to improvement gets tough is the periodic examination…but more importantly, the reward of a successful exam, is the attainment of a higher rank. Now, if one were to ask the average student how important rank is, the likely response would be, “It’s not that important.” If the truth be known, most students enjoy and treasure the new belt ranking, that, on occasion, they are able to earn. One may not look forward to the actual examination, but there is nothing like receiving and getting to put on, a nice, new, higher ranking belt. Let me say that this is nothing to feel guilty about. The Lord designed us to look forward to achievements like this, and each one represents another step [...]