Karate and an Older Woman

Fliss has been a regular karate practitioner for over a year. It's not been easy and many challenges lie ahead. Here's her story.

Karate and an Older Woman

Good grief, why karate? This is something that a few people have asked me since I started practising at the beginning of last year. The glib (but sort-of true) answer that I give them is “because my neighbour got me drunk and made me do it”.  She is a Yudansha who had taken a break, was thinking of restarting, wanted someone to go with her, and suggested this late on New Year’s Eve after plying me with as much alcohol as I usually drink in a whole year. My reactions dulled by a very pleasant sparkling Moscato or three, I didn’t say no quick enough.

Being a woman of a certain age, as the saying goes, I do care about maintaining my health - I am well into that stage of my life where it is a case of ‘use it or lose it’. Furthermore, I had a period of about 10 years or so - basically the whole of my 40s and early 50s - when I was quite unwell and totally unable to exercise, to the point where, for a while, even a flight of stairs was a challenge. Having recovered from that, I am especially grateful to have regained my fitness, it is a precious thing which I do not want to lose until I have to. I’m also spurred on by the fact that my mother’s family has a very dominant Alzheimer’s gene, so all of my generation have started to look at each other and ask ourselves, with wide eyes and worried voices, ‘who’s next?’. Whilst we cannot change those genes, there is plenty of research to suggest that regular exercise, and mental chal-lenge, help to delay the onset of that cruel disease.

So - I run regularly, to keep fit and hopefully to keep the dementia demons away for a while yet at least; but sometimes I crave variety. Yup, karate could tick that box - lower impact, different mus-cles, a challenge for balance and coordination, new learning so a mental challenge too, just the job. I had learned a little bit of a couple of other martial arts (judo and kendo) in my teens and 20s, even taught some generic basic self defence in my early 30s, and enjoyed these things so, even after I had woken up on January 1st, I thought “yes why not, I’ll give it a go”.

Meanwhile, something else that happened in my 40s was a traumatic event which, although I was physically unhurt, left me with very troublesome short term memory problems. After a year or so, it became clear that these were not going away. Luckily, around the same time that it became apparent that those problems were long term, smartphones hit the market, and mine has been of great value in enabling me to function pretty much normally; the bingly-bong of my alert tones have become the soundtrack to my daily life. Work - on the iPhone, wake UP, bingly-bong. Dental appointment - on the iPhone, time to leave, bingly-bong.  Karate class (which is exactly the same time every week but I could still forget given the chance) - on the iPhone, bingly-bong. You get the idea. I just have to remember to not leave the phone on silent. If there’s something I can’t put on the phone I can usually scribble a quick note there and then, so as long as I don’t lose that scrap of paper I get by.

But - I was totally unprepared for the challenge that karate presents. Physically, yes of course. Dif-ferent moves, shapes, precision, balancing skills (hmm, the less said about that the better!), using different muscles, accommodating a dodgy middle-aged spine; all of that is difficult enough, but no surprise. The fact that I run helps, there is at least some reasonable core fitness to fall back on. But mentally ... oh, my days! Mercy! I have to remember stuff! Immediately and without making notes! Words. Moves. A sequence. Details.... Anyone who has trained with me could - quite probably through gritted teeth - vouch for the fact that I learn slowly and get muddled constantly. I am al-ways grateful for the patience and kindness of my training partners and would take this opportunity to thank each of you for that patience and support. There are just so many people in the club who are good and generous in this way, it’s wonderful. Also, Zenshin’s video tutorials have been really helpful with learning kata because I can watch them and practice nearly every day and gradually - I think - some things are starting to sink in. It’s a very, very slow process.

Sarah, Rob, Fliss

But, karate is a mirror that shows us ourselves. How true. What it has made me do is face up to just how rubbish my memory is, which is easy to forget (ahaha) with the ready availability of the gadget in my pocket. Furthermore, what really gets me is just how that makes me feel - stupid, SO flustered, and panicky. It is seriously embarrassing being so forgetful! I felt so inadequate that I nearly didn’t come back after an unavoidable spring break for work reasons. But, my neighbour chivied me along and I did return. Every time there is a new thing to learn, or else a previously-learned thing to recall (i.e. one way or another, every class), I have at least a few, and sometimes many moments when I feel those nerves kick in, and I freeze, because my mind has gone blank yet again. Occasionally I could cry with frustration because it just won’t stick. It is also a challenge insofar as that as well as feeling stupid, I do also feel like a bit of a burden, and sometimes think I should stay away so that people can train with someone who is a bit less daft. But then I get selfish and think, well it is doing me some good, so I think you may be stuck with me for a while yet.

That may not be the most obvious thing for a person to be learning at a karate class - managing a bad memory and the feelings it generates. But I think it is a massively useful lesson for me to be learning, not least because as an issue, it is not about to go away, and I hadn’t really noticed how much it was getting in my way until I started classes.

People think of karate as being about self-defence. Being able to react to a threat or danger with something other than simple panic and freezing. And yes, for sure, it can do that. But for me, it is not about reducing the panic caused by a threat. It is about reducing the panic caused by having to remember stuff. A mirror to myself.

Thanks for reading