Collins UK Travels: Farewell, South Derbyshire Karate Academy

Farewell, SDKA. We will miss you.

"Shawn, we have an opportunity for you to go on secondment to Derby. Are you interested?"
"That depends. Do they have a good martial arts school?"
the discussion above did not happen

"Shawn, now that your secondment is complete, what are the things you miss most?"
"The karate club where the girls and I trained is pretty high up on the list."
the discussion above has happened several times

When we decided to take the secondment, I didn't realize it would include the chance to engage with two experiences I'd found meaningful many years ago, but had assumed would not be part of my life anymore - brass music, and martial arts. Kristine and I decided, after a year of studying Tae Kwon Do together, that sparring with and yelling at each other was good for our marriage. Our 2 and a half years studying at South Derbyshire Karate Academy involved sparring with and yelling at each other that was similarly good for the father-daughter relationship. There is value in training with peers. There is also value in training with your children - in a fixed time during the week when you engage in learning together in ways that challenge you physically and mentally.

Our progression through the lower belts during our first year was pretty straightforward: show up for the weekly session, learn the material, take the belt test. The intermediate material during our second year was more challenging. This meant we progressed as martial artists: the yells grew more emphatic, the kicks raised higher, the punches became straighter, Charis got more intimidating (well, okay, maybe not quite).

There are fun photos of our time with SDKA in the rest of the blog post. Here are three life lessons that I've pondered because of our time there.

Your body is your friend, not your enemy.
When I wrote Letters to My Unborn Children, I articulated a little of my personal discomfort with my body. Kristine and I began discussing this more after the girls were born. Our thoughts were guided by a very helpful book, Why Beauty Matters. It is an excellent, gracious encouragement for women to see their bodies as inherently valuable and worth caring for, instead of enemies to be avoided (by retreating to the life of the mind) or held to false standards. As our discussions turned to how we can help the girls see their bodies as friend instead of foe, I began to name the deeper antagonism I hold toward my own body - first from my height, and later from its role in the deaths of three of my children. I also began to wonder what an equivalent healing voice would be - perhaps entitled something like The Importance of Being Handsome.
Two years of studying at SDKA did not remove my antagonism. It did help me take some steps toward healing. "Shawn, you're hunched very tight. You will be much more difficult to spar with if you extend your arms and take advantage of your height." I don't know how long the Sensei's were telling me this before it registered. I suspect it was a while. "Shawn, you are standing too close to the bag to get full power from your kicks. Your legs are long enough that you can stand quite a bit farther away. Take a big step back and kick again." Slowly I put the pieces together - not just that my body was not my foe, but that SDKA could be a safe environment in which to perform concrete activities that reinforced (in both my muscle memory and my brain) the message of body as friend. I caught glimpses of this a few times - during bag work when my body became loose and relaxed instead of tense; during sparring work when my chronic inability to think on my feet gave way to a handful of improvised moves. I'm grateful for those glimpses. I'm also grateful for the role that SDKA played in helping me at least begin to make a paradigm shift.

A painful parental choice - to test, or not to test
"Daddy, you've worked hard since we all got our blue belts. You've earned the right to test for your purple belt. You should take the test."
"Daddy, family is more important than karate. You should not take the test for your purple belt. Then we can be blue belts together when we leave the U.K."

The two statements reflect the personalities of the daughters who said them. They also reflect how SDKA was a microcosm for learning broader lessons. When I told this story to one of the Sensei's while warming up to test for my purple belt (yes, I decided to do it), he kindly affirmed my parental anguish, and then reflected about the broader lessons as well. In short, everyone will hit a point where what they are doing doesn't come easily anymore. Sometimes it's academics, sometimes it's something else. Their goal at SDKA was to help children and adults hit that point, and then learn the life skills to keep tackling the challenge. The idea is that learning the lesson in a supportive environment for something like a belt test gives you the skills to apply the lesson when the environment may be less supportive.

The girls and I pondered some of these larger questions during our second year at SDKA. We discussed shared priorities when we gave up evenings to focus on a couple belt tests. We discussed shared priorities again when we missed belt tests because we had been traveling. We learned how to tackle complicated problems - like learning the more intricate katas - by breaking them into smaller pieces. The last couple of belt tests involved practicing at home. It was something we did together, despite having distinct responsibilities as engineer, year 5 student, and year 3 student. The girls learned quicker than I did at times, and slower than I did at other times. It strikes me that they will not often get to laugh with me at my fallibility, but here was a place they could.

Will these life lessons get internalized? Who knows. But the chance to encounter them was valuable.

Despite the stoic response from the observing Sensei's, this was an impressive jump. Note the air between my foot and the mat.

I will miss the camaraderie of the Sensei's who graciously taught us every Friday evening and Sunday afternoon

Cardinal rule of sparring - when the opponent is younger, faster, and more nimble than you, RUN AWAY!!!

Before

After - but I earned my belt!

FEKO Competition - when life isn't fair
Elise and Charis got to enter a competition held in Sheffield by the Federation of English Karate Organisations (FEKO) in June, a couple weeks before we left the U.K. They spent many Sunday afternoons training with the competition squad to perfect their kata (I used this time to train with the sparring squad, but they made much more progress than me).

At the competition, each of them was placed with groups of children of similar age and belt level. The rule was that everyone would perform their kata twice, and then finalists would be selected. Elise was in a small group. She made it through to the finals and got a medal. Charis was in a large group. The judges decided there wasn't enough time for everyone to perform twice, so they made selections after the first round. We learned later that many children in her group were competing at the karate world championships in Dublin the following week. They were using the FEKO competition as a warm-up.

Charis was understandably heartbroken. It didn't bother her much that she competed against folks who would be at the world championships. It did bother her a great deal that the rules changed part-way into the competition, and that she never got a chance to perform her second kata.

I discussed with one of the Sensei's, who is also a colleague at Rolls-Royce, how Charis's experience embodies so much of what we encounter in life. Rules change that you cannot control. You do your best with what you have, and sometimes the competition is just stacked against you. You can choose to be bitter when this happens, or you can choose to keep conducting yourself with dignity. Again, SDKA was a microcosm for a broader life lesson. For the record, I did not discuss any of this with Charis. I simply told her it was okay to be sad. In their typical resilient fashion, the girls came to peace with the disappointment by the time we were driving home. They decided that Charis got a trophy at the SDKA Christmas party (when Elise didn't), and Elise got a medal at the FEKO competition (when Charis didn't), so life was fair. In the long run, I think I was more scarred by the experience than they were (I felt better about my turmoil when I compared notes with a couple other parents and found out I wasn't alone).

The day finished on a more positive note. The under-12 age girls sparring competition was short a couple of teams. The SDKA coaches assembled two teams, one of which included Elise and Charis. They held their own, and helped their team earn 3rd place.