New Start For Karate Mum

Please don't get the impression that I'm an expert in karate. I'm not. Neither am I willing to enlighten you with an image. Use your imagination - it's generally better than a picture. So for starters, I'm middle-aged, a mum (obviously) and not very fit. All perverts and thrill seekers click away now, you've gone badly wrong. Like many other people I used to be fit, in a physical rather than image sense, and enjoyed exercise and looking as good as I could. Back in the days when I had the time. Before motherhood and a mortgage. Now, I'm not going to launch into one of those "before I had the kids" speeches, that by implication suggests that anyone without kids has loads of spare time on their hands. I chose my path and I am both grateful and busy as a consequence.

Anyway, the situation at present is that I have become rather unfit with all the usual excuses. A decade has slid past without any action on my part to increase my physical activity and I have come to realize, I don't really enjoy exercise. I've had the odd hour at the gym - we joined as a family when the kids were young, so that exercise would always be part of their lives - but exercise continues not to be part of my life. So what has changed? Well a bit like an alcoholic who finally realizes they need to stop drinking, even though it feels good at the time, I've finally realized that I need to give up sloth, even though I enjoy it. What caused this transformation of Damascene proportions? Three things: opportunity, my children are now older; fear, that if I leave it much longer it will be too hard to do; and knowledge, of the benefits of exercise on health and longevity. I'm particularly interested in the latter. From my middle-aged perspective, with no siblings and both parents long dead, I'm quite aware I'm the next in-line for a date with death.

I had initially intended to take the Thai (or possibly Korean, I'm not sure) kick-boxing class. This offered two advantages: first, that is was not held at the pink-lycra-festooned gym already mentioned; and second, that I knew nobody who went. I am grateful I only went to observe. The class was fantastic. It contained 12 of the fittest people I have ever seen in my life. Not glamorous, just fit. What followed would have been classed a punishing by olympian standards. Nobody vomited, but I knew that I would have and I have not returned. Now I come to the karate option. This is held at the gym and does contain people I know. The first class was alright and I hope that if I stick at it, I'll slowly get fitter. Let's see.......


The history of karate

some evidence that karate is good for you from the British journal of Sports Medicine