#ladyatarms

A lot has changed since then.

My TKD school got taken over by a turd who turned it into a McDojo and pushed out anyone who might have challenged his authority, and my attempts at starting again failed.

My health has gone downhill, with chronic fatigue and probably arthritis hitting hard.

I've started again in Shotokan Karate. Currently a white belt, but we'll see what happens at the first grading in December (was meant to be May, but well....)

I wouldn't be comfortable wearing my black belt for anything at the moment. It's a symbol of mental and physical confidence and ability, and I'm not there.

I will be, though. I'm going to get my fitness, my physical confidence, my abilities, back to where they were, and further. It's a different road to do it the second time, with more of the reality of disability at the forefront.

So, I’m preparing for my first karate grading, in December — it was meant to be in May, with a second in November, but well... *gestures at the world*.

Given my previous experience, I’m pretty sure it will be more placement test, rather than the standard “white belt’s first grading”. So, I’ve been pushing myself to learn as much as I can of what’s unfamiliar.

The kihon (fundamentals), I’m pretty fine with. Terminology is the big point of difficulty, what with it being in Japanese instead of the English I’m used to.

The kata (patterns), I was most nervous. But I’ve managed to get reasonably confident with Heian Shodan, Nidan, Sandan, and just today I’ve gotten confident with Heian Yondan. That’s enough kata to get me to senior purple belt/4th kyu! And I still have another two months.

The kumite (sparring) is an interesting one to learn. I’ve always struggled with set step sparring routines, since there’s less context to the memorisation than the longer sequences in patterns. But I’ll get there.

The thing I’ve found most useful is getting the grading syllabus, and laying everything out on a spreadsheet. I’ve written down the translations for all the kihon - with much googling - and that’s been a great study aid for that. I’ve marked which things are needed for each grade, and how confident I am with them.

Last night, at my second lesson of Shotokan Karate, I nearly passed out. Felt rather stupid about it, because of course I did.

The problem is, last time I was training with any good intensity, it was preparation for a 2nd Dan grading that never ended up actually happening. My mind remembers how to push me that hard. My body does not remember how to endure that sort of push.

So the next step is to remember how to tune the pushing to the endurance I have (plus a little more), rather than the endurance I want to get back to. Patience.

So, I have acquired my first canvas gi. It feels fantastic to wear. Lovely snap to it, too. I’ll need to take hte arms and legs up a little bit, because it thinks I should be taller than I am.

So, I just had my first lesson of Shotokan Karate.

It was good.

Rather familiar, and I'm struck by how close it is to the first style of Taekwon-Do I trained in ... Or should I say, how close that style of Taekwon-Do is to Shotokan.

A lot of the movements are pretty close to things I learned a decade and a half ago, but have trained myself out of doing. We'll see how long it takes to train myself back.

I know this blog has been silent for ages. So, to catch you all up on where I’ve been:

I quit my old Taekwon-Do club because the guy taking it over was emotionally abusive and financially exploitative.

I tried starting a new branch of another club with someone else leaving at the same time for the same reason.

She kicked me to the curb as soon as it looked like success might be possible

Trying to run my side of things on my own... fell completely flat

Health problems for most of this year mean I’ve had a sword in my hand once since April

BUT! I’ve been looking around for a new martial art to train in. I’ve been looking for something fairly traditional, but not Taekwon-Do because of complicated reasons.

I’ve found a Shotokan Karate school nearby that looks like it has some potential. I’m going to take a trial class next Monday, all going well.

So, I’ve been involved in martial arts for nearly fourteen years now (almost half my life... there’s a scary thought) and there’s something that occasionally makes the back of my brain wonder if I’m actually making any progress.

Every time there’s a good action movie, there’ll be behind the scenes footage of the actors practising their fight scenes, and on first glance it looks like they’re doing some incredibly complicated martial arts. Definitely things that I can’t do, despite how long I’ve been at this.

On first viewing, that can be a little discouraging.

But the important thing to remember, and that I have to remind myself of often, is that what they’re doing is not what we’re doing.

While it’s a display of excellent control, positioning, timing, speed, and often endurance, all vital skills for a martial artist, there’s one skill not involved in their performances that, for us, ties everything together and makes what they do impossible.

They aren’t reacting.

Movie martial arts (and other combat) sequences are choreographed. When done well, they can flow like a real encounter, but without reaction in the mix, there are moves that they can do that wouldn’t work.

That parry-riposte-cut-cut-void combination in the sword fight? They can do that because they know the opponent won’t turn their thrust into a feint-disengage-cut sequence. They can get into that complicated bind because their opponents elbows will stay out of their face.

That complicated kick sequence with a lot of spinning that looks so intimidating on screen? That’s only possible because of their absolute certainly that their opponent won’t shift unexpectedly, or block one of the kicks in a way that throws them off balance, or close the range part way through one of the spins.

There’s a general trend in European sword fighting styles that I find very interesting. Note that I say general trend, and not 100%-accurate hard rule.

In general, earlier sword styles had minimal in-built hand protection, and guard positions (the general resting state between actions) which were further back, often behind the bulk of the body, and in general, later styles had hand protection gradually developing more robust, and moved towards guard positions held in front of the body, occasionally near full extension.

Overall, this makes some sense. If my hand is unprotected, I’m going to hold it out of attacking range until I’m actually doing something, while if my hand is more covered, then the quicker actions that having it forward will allow become feasible.

However, in the discussions of this phenomenon, what I’ve not been able to find is agreement on the chicken-and-egg question, and I feel like it may be a mix of both. With slightly improved hand protection, I might try a more forward guard position, and with a more forward guard position, I might look into a more protective hilt.

The later styles also tended towards the thrust, over the cut, though there are cutting-heavy styles with significant hand protection and very forward guards, such as later sabre techniques, so while that may be a factor, it’s not the whole story.

Saying that there wasn’t as much in-built hand protection in earlier swords is not, of course, to say that the hand was undefended. While gauntlets of plate steel entered the scene a lot later than you might think, mail-backed gauntlets and other such things were known, but even then, that wasn’t the main protection for the hand.

The main protection for the sword hand... was the shield. Reconstructions of viking fighting techniques usually have the two working in tandem to a great extent, and this can also be seen in early fighting manuals such as I.33 (c.1320s), which uses sword and buckler (small hand-shield).

In I.33, only two guards are shown with the sword forward of the body (there are a few on the body, but they count as a rear-held guard for these purposes) and in those two, the hand is almost entirely protected by the buckler. 

In fact, throughout the manual, the sword and buckler hands only separate in two circumstances: when the sword is well behind the body, in which case the buckler moves to cover the entire arm (such as by guarding at the elbow when that part is furthest forward), or when the engagement has closed, and the buckler is holding the opponent’s sword under control, in which case it is thus protecting the entire self.