Lee Gale

It was on the Piccadilly Line to the karate competition where the nerves descended. By the time I’d reached Hounslow West I’d worked out that I was going to give the crowd something worth watching: I was going in hard, like an apprentice dervish, from the first second. To entertain!

One of the problems of karate training in the evening is that when I’m back home, I can’t settle or switch off. I eat my tea, have a glass of red or three, make some karate notes in my big writing pad and then shuffle off to bed – whereupon I get all Maxi Jazz: insomnia please release me and let me dream; I can’t get no sleep.

I told the physio that I had my first fight coming up later this month and his reaction was a shake of the head: “You’re not up to it.” But, having explained that my entire existence had been geared towards the bout against Heathrow Shotokan since November, and that it wasn’t like cage-fighting, I was given a tentative green light. I’m back at the hospital next month to see how I’ve coped with the exercises I’ve been set to get me walking properly again. The resistance bands Mrs Gale bought me for Christmas have been rushed into mainline service.

I asked if we could be shown how to perform the ideal press-up and was told to practise “negative press-ups”. I thought I was doing negative press-ups already in that they were making me unhappy, but in fact a “neggie” is a press-up lite where you slowly ease yourself to the floor then use your knees to return to the start point. It helps build up shoulder strength. I’ve been set five a day (and yes, that’s a 1990 Cameroon football shirt I’m wearing).

I love katas. We went through nidan and then more thoroughly with the work-in-progress sandan (Middlesex Shotokan Karate has a clip of yours truly strutting his sandan stuff on Facebook). There are nuances that continually present themselves with sandan. It’s a double block on the progression up the dojo, not an outward block! Oss!

I’d had the so-called booster in October and hoped to be spared Covid’s American Werewolf In London symptoms. But I became ensnared in its lycanthropic grip and had to cry off both of the week’s karate sessions. It was a disastrous martial arts start to 2023.

Christmas, as is customary, whizzed by. One minute I was ordering a kebab with Mrs Gale at Has on Green Lanes for our now-traditional festive take-away and the next I had the Antiques Roadshow feeling of anguish and dread knowing that it was back to work the next day. Three weeks on from my last visit to the Church Hall, I stood in the gloom of the car park with a fixed gaze on the darkened glazing of the dojo. I’d done very little practice since we broke up for Christmas.

I made it to Christmas. Despite a knee injury, an on-going thigh socket issue, a cold that walloped me and a bruised shinbone that has little improved since Monty gave my mae-geri kick a firm downward block in grading, I’m in one piece, feeling fitter, much fresher, of better mental state and genuinely pleased with myself for sticking at it and moving up three belts. If I can do this, you definitely can.

I’ve been referred to a physio and given a list of gels to rub on my knee and thigh socket. The good news is, I’ve been told that I can keep up with karate despite the knee injury – but not to push it if it’s too much. The problem is, trying to book a physio through the self-referral form on my phone overrides karate’s positivity aura and makes me furious!

Thursday morning dawned like a Christmas Day with menace. I knew I was excited about something when I woke up, rubbing my bad knee, and then the realisation hit me like a diamond bullet in the forehead. Happy Grading Day!