By Rikke, Member until 2008
The amazing thing about children is that they make you do things you never imagined in your life. Like, for example, taking part in a karate meet on the weekend leading up to Christmas Eve, when everyone else is Christmas shopping like crazy.
I had sat on the bench for a year and a half and watched my daughter Ditte practice karate. It was not fun to say the least. "Then why don't you start yourself?" asked a parent at a meeting in the spring. She practiced kickboxing herself, while her husband and daughter practiced karate in the Shindenkan. Well, that was a thought. And the idea turned into action in August 2006, when Rasmus, aged seven, and I, aged 39, started karate. Now I am here, at Tjørnelyskolen on a Saturday in December with my children. That is, Jokokidz train in one floor while adult beginners stand at a row of mats in another location and are instructed in backward roll drops.
“Look,” says the instructor, “it's amazingly easy. You just have to watch your head.” And then he throws himself backwards onto the mat.
Here are a few of us asking to be shown one more time, please. He does so with pleasure. Two instructors demonstrate forward roll drops (super easy!), backward roll drops and side drops. Falling on the back will have to wait until we are more practiced. But we'll see. I've never tried rolling backwards on the ground, but there are many things I haven't tried, and as you know, once has to be the first. So I roll backwards along the mat - which fails both the first and second time.
"It's because you don't believe it," explains the instructor. "If you tell yourself you can't, the body stops halfway. You have to tell yourself that you have to go all the way around. Then it's easy enough.” After which he throws what looks like baby food into the balance again. Since it's my turn, I tell my body to go around. Backwards, mind you. And think for a moment, it has obviously understood me, because I come all the way around. I roll backwards down the mats until I end up dizzy at the other end. Victory! Maybe not super easy. But a challenge and, like everything else about Yakami Shinsei-ryu karate, super fun!.
“How do you find time for that? And profit" asks my friend Charlotte on the phone the next day. How? I have never seen myself as "one-who-goes-to-karate." But it's funny and it makes a profit. In the evening, I can state that a hundred times I would rather spend Saturday trying to hit my opponent in the head, kick him or her in the stomach and scream loudly at the same time, than I want to do Christmas shopping at the Fish Market.
Now I hope I get the violet belt soon. It requires me to throw myself backwards much more, practice many more kicks and practice shihos and katas at home in the living room. It's a challenge for a bookworm like me. Fortunately, I love challenges.
To all Shindenkaners: Ho, ho, ho and a very merry Christmas. If Santa Claus knew there was such a thing as karate, he would immediately drop the Christmas presents and start throwing himself on the mat. Backwards! But wait... maybe it was actually Santa demonstrating kicks and punches on the mat in the great hall?
