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\nExecutive Summary (tl;dr): You don’t have to do karate “forever” or for decades. For however long you do it, while you are doing it, you have to be serious about your training for it to mean anything. And the more years you practice, the more interesting and beneficial to your health and self-protection it will be, with almost no limit.<\/em>
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\nKarate is different than most sports<\/strong>. Unlike most sports where you peak at a relatively young age, in karate you can improve for your entire life if you continue to practice. You learn more subtleties of body movements, balance, positioning, timing, and generating power. You learn more about your own capabilities and can still feel the same sense of accomplishment and mastery as when you learned your very first kata. As long as you practice faithfully.<\/p>\n
Karate gets more interesting as you progress<\/strong>. Practice can be tedious and repetitive, at any level of your training. For the truly dedicated student, you don\u2019t mind those parts \u2013 \u201cit\u2019s ALL good.\u201d However, there\u2019s no doubt that at the beginning, it can be very frustrating, because you are learning new ways of moving that are, to be honest, unnatural. In another post, \u201cLearning a new way to move,\u201d I wrote, \u201c[I]f you are new to the martial arts, learning the new ways of conveying your body from one position to another is a difficult stage in your training.\u201d But everything else is new as well. Until you reach that first plateau of achievement, classes can be daunting and it may seem like you\u2019re not getting anywhere. But practice will eventually become far more interesting than those initial weeks and months of learning stances, steps, and basic kicks and arm techniques.<\/p>\n You never stop practicing the basics<\/strong>. Heian Shodan<\/em> (HS) is the very first kata we learn. Most of the time, when I practice kata alone or even when I\u2019m leading a class in kata, I start with HS. I have learned or taught myself 23 out of Shotokan\u2019s 26 kata, so far. But HS, or just doing sets of punches in place, never gets old! You can always find things to adjust or improve.<\/p>\n There are a lot of bad martial arts schools<\/strong>. The term for that is \u201cMcDojo.\u201d For McDojos, many of which are franchise-based, it\u2019s all about the numbers, and promotions and rewards happen too quickly and too often. They usually have large student-to-instructor ratios, high membership fees, and limitations on how many classes you can take per week. Most of what they teach is of little ultimate value.<\/p>\n Karate is not for everyone<\/strong>. McDojos aside — \u201cPay now for a black belt in only 18 months!\u201d– very few people who start karate stick with it long enough to reach black belt. And as any good Sensei worth their shio<\/em> (Japanese for \u201csalt\u201d) will tell you, when you arrive at black belt, your journey is just beginning. Most people simply don\u2019t have the discipline and perseverance necessary to master the complexities and sophistication of the advanced levels, and to internalize the mindset and skills needed to actually use karate to defend yourself. (Some find a different activity that suits them better.)<\/p>\n
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