HIS Karate-Do

This year, both Christmas Eve and New Years Eve fall on training days…so we will not have class on those days. Awwww!…yes, I know that there are some of you die-hards that actually hate to miss any training opportunity. Don’t forget, no training on Monday, 24 Dec and Monday, 31 Dec….enjoy your last day to shop for presents and popping firecrackers. You can take this break without feeling guilty, haha. What is a break anyway? We all know and have taken Spring Breaks, Winter Breaks, and Summer Breaks. Quite a few of us take coffee breaks….and fewer and fewer take smoke breaks these days. More specifically, a break means temporary…we intend to go back to school or back to work, after “the pause that refreshes”, haha. Why then, should we ever feel guilty about taking a break? And why don’t we say that we’re taking a shopping break, or a golfing break, or a eating good food break, or a watching television break? The truth is, one usually takes breaks from things that are kind of difficult or demanding or requires discipline. Doing an activity that is purely fun and relaxation doesn’t require these attributes…and we don’t really need a [...]

I remember growing up, at about 12 or 13 years old, when I shot up something like 6″ during one summer (I could have used a couple more summers like that, haha). Entering our teens, all of us experience a time of rapid growth…in height, in weight, in strength, in looks, in interests, in relationships, in knowledge, etc. It is an exciting time of change and transformation, but often accompanied by new thoughts, emotions and bodily changes that are hard to deal with. It’s what our parents used to call…”the awkward phase.” When I’d demonstrate some uncoordinated movement – like bump into the wall – (due to legs that were a couple of inches longer than before, or arms that hadn’t caught up) or have my voice crack, mom would say, “He’s going through that awkward phase.” After a while, the body settles down and we regain our coordination level and once again are comfortable in our movements…at least, until some knee/back/shoulder problem forces us to change our system of movement. Karate-Do forces each of us to re-enter the awkward phase. The difference is that this time, we enter voluntarily, and this out-of-our-comfort-zone phase may last for years. One of [...]

Well, we just went through our bi-annual exams, which lead to bi-annual promotions (hopefully), which lead to the usual congratulations and to… a new level of incompetence. For us old guys (from the 1980’s), there was the Peter Principle, the idea that one would work hard, achieve, and get promoted to a higher level…step by step, one would go through this process, higher and higher, until one ultimately reached his or her level of incompetence. These days, the Peter Principal has fallen away as a leadership concept, and it was certainly never the last word on the phenomenon of promotions. There is some veracity to the idea, and if we look back, we probably all remember some old boss or manager who was excellent at what he/she did, until one too many a promotion happened, and the poor manager struggled and floundered at the new job, often for years, unable to repeat the successes that got him/her there. However, what I see more often than not, are folks who have never tried hard enough or believed enough in themselves to get promoted to the level they truly had the potential to reach. Which would you rather be? Personally, I’d rather [...]