Like my wife, I wanted to do this blog so I could share with others what it is like really getting into martial arts half-way through life. She was an athlete when she was much younger but I have never been the athletic type. I was a smoker for 22 years (until I quit a year ago) and I’ve been moderately overweight my entire life. I’m not a team player and the only physical activity I have ever enjoyed to any extent was lifting weights because I can do it by myself.
I’m the main one who has been taking our daughter to her martial arts classes for the past 2 years and have made friends with some of the other parents as well as the master. Over those 2 years I had provided our Master with assistance on a wide variety of things and as a way of saying thank you he offered to let me take classes for free. I had let my gym membership lapse 6 months prior due to cost so I decided to take him up on the offer.
I had always had a passing interest in martial arts but when I was a kid my parents couldn’t afford classes. In middle-school I read a number of martial arts books and spent many hours pouring over martial arts supply catalogs. But by the time I got to high school I had found other pursuits to occupy my time, namely music, girls, drugs, and alcohol.
My interest in martial arts wasn’t rekindled until my late 20’s when my parents moved to Japan. I developed an interest in all things Japanese and that included the martial arts. Still all I did was a little more reading on the subject and I developed more appreciation for martial arts movies as the wire-fu movies were starting to make their mark.
When my daughter was 5 we decided to put her into gymnastic classes so she would get regular exercise and become more physically coordinated. The closest school we could find was a school that offered “karate” and gymnastics. We would sit there and watch the karate classes while waiting for gymnastics to start and I hoped she would develop an interest. One night she was the only kid who showed up for gymnastics and so I suggested the teacher give her a karate lesson. AT the end of the night her tied a white belt around her waist and she was hooked. We couldn’t afford both so she dropped gymnastics and started taking karate. I have been extremely supportive of her because I want her to develop self-confidence and the ability to defend herself.
By the time I started taking classes I was 37 years old and weighed 260 lbs. The only other people in my class my age were an active duty Marine and a black belt. Everyone else was under the age of 18! Talk about swallowing your pride. Its not easy walking into class knowing you have no chance at keeping up the rest of the class. But I did it because I knew I would get better and my pride would not let me quit.
So in the process of all this I have discovered some thing that I think will help those who are considering getting started in a martial art in mid-life and to also provide moral support for other late-bloomers. Hence, the blog.
-Him
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