Liam Keaveney, the Chairman of the British Karate Kyokushinkai (BKK) asked me to write a few words on my experiences at the BKK Summer Camp I attended in August 2015. These are they.
"Why do you do karate?"
The question asked by Shihan Liam
Keaveney at the National Grading course he held five weeks before Summer Camp.
“Why do you want to do your Sandan
grading?”
The question I asked myself over the
years since attaining my Nidan.
The first of those two questions is
a profound one, the answer to which being undoubtedly as personal for each
karateka as the words I’m writing here are to me.
When I was 15 I read a book by Sosai
in which he talked about the importance of aspirations, having goals to aim
for. He also mentioned that whatever you do, you should do it as well as you
possibly can.
It was clear to me that both those
things are inexorably linked. And his words ended up influencing not just my
karate, but every part of my life since.
So for me, above all the other
reasons to do karate, the main one is this: to get better.
That being the case, the answer to
the second question was simple.
If the grading system is a way of
proving that you are improving, then I had to see if I was or not.
There was only one time and only one
place I could do that.
And so, eight months before Summer
Camp began I made to the decision to take my Sandan grading.
I’d experienced a few National
Gradings in the past, five to be precise. (Yes, 2nd kyu, 1st
kyu, Shodan and Nidan only add up to four. I actually failed my Shodan the
first time round, but more of that later), so I had a good idea of what I was
in for.
Immediately I felt that familiar
sense of pressure.
Only this time the stakes were
higher than they’d ever been, so the pressure was greater.
That pressure led to a kind of
tunnel vision, an intense focus on that day up there in the distance. And there
was a lot of work to do to get there.
I’m sure I’m not alone amongst
karateka in saying that the hardest part of training is finding the time to
train.
Working 12 hour days after having
recently started my own business, plus trying to remain a decent husband and
father, made navigating the journey to August a complex one.
Parks, hotel rooms, toilets, lifts,
all became my dojos. Anywhere I went, my grading came with me.
Kata played a huge part of my
training. Constantly referring to the kata book, with the odd question emailed
to Shihan Janine. (By the way whether you’re going for grading or not you owe
it to yourself to go to her kata courses. You won’t believe how much you’ll
learn.) It helped with sharpening technique and increasing power as well as stamina.
You can see why Hanshi says that kata was the hardest part of his training for
his 100 man fight.
Of course, one of the greatest
pressures of the Sandan grading is the creation your own personal kata.
I started work on mine with a basic
framework and kept building and tweaking as the weeks went on. Until finally I
was able to lock it down, write it up and spend the final few months practising
it.
The course Liam Keaveney ran before
the Summer Camp was invaluable.
Where no question was too dumb (despite
the merciless mickey-taking) and where the plan for the grading and
expectations were laid out clearly.
Quite simply, the course removes
your excuses.You come away knowing what you need to do and what you’re going to
go through.
It was also impressed upon us that
the actual grading would be only part of the grading. The whole Summer Camp is
an opportunity to be scrutinised. And passed or failed accordingly.
There would be no let-up. The
pressure would be on for the whole camp.
"When you go into that grading
you're going into war." Shihan Liam explained.
He was right.
But it wasn’t war with the
instructors examining you, nor with your fellow students.
In the grading you're at war with
your own mind and body.
You’re fighting the years you have
on the clock. The voices in your head that tell you you can't do it. Every
imperfection you have tried to iron out but haven't quite managed to.
And winning or losing that war
dictates whether you pass or fail.
No matter what training you’ve done,
it’s your mind that makes the difference. As the saying goes “if you think you
can or you think you can’t you’re absolutely right”.
So training six days a week,
sometimes twice a day helped my mind believe that it was ready to win the war.
As the countdown continued the
pressure increased, ramping up in the days immediately preceding the camp.
My biggest fear became not the
grading but not making it to the
grading. Getting knocked off my motorbike, catching a cold, pulling a muscle.
Over those eight months I’d overcome
pulled hamstrings, tennis elbows (needing injections in both arms), chest
infections and numerous other attempts my body made to stop me.
All I wanted to do now was make it
to the grading in one piece.
And so it was with much relief that,
almost 34 years after I first walked into a dojo, and seven years to the day
after gaining my Nidan, I walked into the last grading I will ever take.
We lined up and were given our
numbers.
This was it. The beginning of the
end.
“Fudo dachi.”
What all that training and studying
had been for.
“Yoi!”
Whilst we had no idea of the time
(the clock had been removed from the hall), as the hours went on, thanks to
Shihan Liam’s course, we could always tell where we were in the running order:
kata, kihon, renraku, conditioning (press ups/squats/sit-ups/jumps over the belt),
pad work, fighting.
All the while Hanshi along with
Shihans Liam and Alex Kerrigan, and Sensei Moss Agneli prowled the hall, eyes
boring into us, spotting (and often, due to their intense gaze) prompting
mistakes.
I remember quite a bit of what I did
in those eight and a half hours. But nothing of what anyone else did.
That’s because of that Shodan
grading I failed back in 1987.
What happened there was really interesting.
There were about 30 of us. We
completed all the techniques. All the excercises. Everything by the book. But
as the grading went on the kiais got quieter. Then stopped altogether. The
power dissipated. Everything just got a bit ‘soft’.
Everyone was being influenced by
everyone else. In a bad way.
Hanshi failed every one of us. For
‘lack of spirit.’
I was tremendously upset, but
quickly understood why it happened.
So what did it teach me?
Ignore everyone around you. Be
influenced by no one else. Trust yourself. Plough your own furrow. Oh, and
shout like your life depends on it.
Eventually we heard Hanshi’s words
echo round the hall:
“That’s it. Your grading is over.”
Of course it wasn’t really. We knew
we still had the rest of the camp to prove ourselves. So the pressure remained.
Two hours later, with gi still
soaking wet, we were back in the hall for an evening session with Hanshi. This
time with the rest of the camp attendees.
The next morning at 6.30 we lined up
on the field for a warm-up with Hanshi before splitting into groups for
different activities.
Those of us who were grading ended
up squashed into a squash court nose to nose with Shihans Liam and Alex and
Sensei Moss who proceeded to point out exactly how rubbish our techniques and
stances were.
This was at once terrifying (clearly
we’d all failed our grading the day before if we can’t even punch a decent
chudan zuki) and enlightening (no matter how long you train there is always so
much room for improvement. We are striving to achieve that unachievable
perfection after all).
The rest of the day was split into
different sessions comprising self-defence, pad work, kata and technique
‘polishing’.
On the final day we had another
6.30am squash court session, followed by training on the field, with Shihans
David Pickthall and Nick da Costa offering up some really useful knockdown
combinations. And then came the fighting.
Those grading had to line up for
five fights, then everyone else was allowed to fight each other, finishing off
with another five fights for just the grading group.
I didn’t count how many rounds we
had. It felt like a thousand, but it might have only been 20.
From there it was back into the big
hall to cheer as the results of the gradings were read out and those successful
jogged happily up to collect their signed licences.
Brown belts, Shodans and Nidans.
They all heard their names called out.
The three of us attempting our
Sandan just sat and sweated.
The pressure now reached an all time
high.
There was one final hurdle. We each
had to perform our personal katas for the assembled group.
It was us performing our own
creation in front of people who knew infinitely more about what made a good
kata than us. (I later had a nightmare in which I was training in the dojo
totally naked. Not sure what that meant…)
Afterwards we stood there convinced
of two things: that there was nothing we could have done better, and that our
best just wasn’t good enough.
Then, one by one our names were read
out.
Mine was last.
Finally the self-inflicted pressure
that had started eight months earlier was lifted.
It was replaced by a feeling I had
not expected.
That the grading had not been the
end.
But simply the end of the beginning.
That I’d finally completed the
basics.
And there was only one thing left to
do now:
Get better.
