WEEKS 20-21: Punching In Home Gym

 

Five weeks after I last set foot in the dojo (to receive my red belt… Yessss, I’m a red belt!), it was time to start the hard work again. So why have I not been punching and blocking for such a long time (and not writing a karate blog)? Holidays and illness.

It wasn’t me that had been off colour. Sensei Amrit had come down with what sounded like a two-week bad cold caught on a flight back from her break at an exotic location abroad. And as my fellow students are still crafting sandcastles on beaches around the planet, my return to the dojo was a one-on-one session – just me and the sensei – and for an hour and a half this time, not the regulation hour.

Throughout August, I’d talked a good karate workout to my colleagues in the office, and also to friends and family while on “holiday”, which in fact was a driving trip taking in the sights and smells of Northampton, Glossop, Stockport, Manchester, Doncaster and Scarborough. No overseas sojourns for us. The small amount of weight I’d shed in my 13 weeks of karate were back after a week of cooked breakfasts, prodigious boozing and a long overdue first visit to a Harvester (Northampton; that’s the menu on the main image). And sciatica had roared back into my life with a vengeance.

One-on-one karate is worth its weight in gold. You learn more quickly because you can ask direct questions and re-do moves that you’ve loused up. But we were not at the usual church backroom on Green Lanes. Instead, I’d taken a short stroll to Sensei Amrit’s personal gym – a hodge-podge of weights, kettlebells and whatavya – plus a punchbag.

We went through kata kihon and kata heian shodan, finessing the technique that I’d learnt – but never really 100 per cent mastered – to get to a red belt. Switching stances from front leg to back while in full flight remains a problem but hopefully upping to two sessions a week in September will cure my slack ways.

I’m not sure I’ve ever hit a punchbag before but it passed a few lively minutes as I thwacked jodan (face), chudan (chest) and gedan (stomach) over and over, using blocks as an additional attack method to a make-believe throat. Beating the living daylights out of somebody must be quite tiring.

It was great to be back burning calories again. I like thumping and kicking. My thighs were shaking on my walk home and the New Order Touring Technique T-shirt I’d been wearing under my gi jacket was sopping wet with sweat.

Although I felt fine the next morning, by the time I reached the office a delayed stiffness had developed in my ageing muscles and by the following night I had trouble moving from side to side in bed. But you know what they say. Pain is weakness leaving the body. There’s no karate next week, so I’ll see you all in a fortnight as we set sail for a yellow belt.