Archive | April 2013

Who’s afraid of a karate girl?

Apr18

“You know you scare men, right?”

So saith one of my best friends.

“I don’t care! If doing karate scares them off, I don’t want ’em!”

I’ve been single for many more years than I’ve been practicing karate, so I don’t think it’s the karate that’s keeping men at bay. More than likely it’s my sassiness. Or my independence. Or the fact that I haven’t even looked for a man. Who had time? I was busy raising a competitive athlete!

But would a woman practicing karate really scare a man?? Why? What, exactly, would be the intimidating part – the fact that she could defend herself? Would he worry she’d spring surprise attacks on him just for fun?

Now that I think about it, pre-karate I dated a guy I would have been tempted to use as my crash test dummy. He was the type to be intimidated by a female martial artist. But I think that says more about him than it does me, and also explains why the relationship didn’t last very long! 🙂

Personally, I think the strength and grace of martial arts is very appealing, but I know it’s not for everyone. So maybe it does scare some men. I’m not going to lose any sleep over it. I’m sure if someone can’t handle that aspect of my life, they definitely can’t handle the rest of me!

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What a difference…

Apr16

I went to the Hombu for Hanshi’s classes tonight. I’m happy to report my bad attitude did not attend with me. 🙂

I led warm-ups for the Family Open class and, oh gee – I must have forgotten to have everyone do push-ups!  <wink! wink!>

I learned a new kata in Brown & Black Belt class, which was encouraging, then got some focused attention from Hanshi on my newest bo kata in Weapons class.

Overall, it was a great night of classes and I’m feeling pretty good.

What a difference a day makes!

Frustration

Apr15

I was almost in tears after tonight’s class. Not good. Really not good when I felt the same after last Thursday’s class.

I’m so frustrated. I feel like I haven’t learned anything in the past several weapons classes. Like I’m not making progress, or worse – going backwards. We’ve been doing weapons almost a year, and I cannot believe how slowly I’m learning! Maybe my brain has built a brick wall and it’s not going to let any more kata slip through. Who knows.

But if I’m not learning anything, what’s the point? Why bother to go to class? For all the learning I’m doing, I might as well stay at home and practice by myself. The results would be about the same, but maybe with less frustration.

I hate this feeling! I’m going to be grumpy and unpleasant a bit longer. I’ll wonder why I’m trying to learn karate, whether I should give up on weapons, whether I’d hate myself if I didn’t keep working at it. And I expect that, like after last Thursday’s Kenpo class, I’ll eventually realize I did something right or learned something tonight. And I’ll shut up, change my attitude, and get back to it for the next class.

The ups and downs of being a student. *sigh*