Hi everyone. (never used a forum before so not sure if I am going to post in this world or another. )
I am a 37 yr old female and have been with karate for about 16 months and have been a blue belt for about 2months. I train 4-5 times a week and I absolutely love training! However, I seem to have hit a wall in the last week or two and just can't seem to do anything right. All my techniques feel week, my stances feel poor and slow, my kata is off, I feel uncoordinated when sparring and I feel completely overwhelmed about training. I have been told about the blue belt blues and was wondering what info you all might be able to help me with. ie. What exactly are blue belt blues and have I got them and most importatnly, what do you do about it??

Anyway, any advice would be appreciated. I think I am going to enjoy this forum stuff!

Cheers

Kimu

Well the blue belt blues I can relate to, I was a blue belt with GKR for 9 months. So I would say after having your blue belt for two months so far you probably don't have the blue belt blues yet, maybe give it another seven months

I think the thing to consider we all go through up and downs in our training, just like in everyday life. When that happens we need to decide how we are going to tackle this. At the begining of February this happened to me, personal circumstances arose that put a lot of pressure on me, and my way of dealing with that was that I didn't really want to face people, so i stopped training for about a month. Decided to go back because I actually missed the people and the training.

Given my time over again, I probably wouldn't hide away, I'd tackle the problem head on, and keep on training regardless. Maybe you need to vary the way you train, or set yourself some short term goals to keep you motivated to be able to work through this periods in your training. Have you thought about having a chat to your sensei, explaining the problem to them and see if they can come up with some strategies to get you through this phase.

Hope this helps

P.S By the way, Welcome and congratulations on your first post here, hope there are many more

Hi there....I know exactly what you mean, although in my case it is Green Belt Blues! I have been a Green belt for about 6 months and am begining to wonder if I will ever grade to Blue. My Saifa seems to be getting worse not better and everything else feels shaky too! I train about 3 sometimes 4 times a week. I'm hoping this is just a phase and I'll suddenly improve again but sometimes I wonder if I just dont have the necessary strength. I started in Feb 2005 at the grand old age of 47....maybe I'm just too old! On the other hand, my 16 year old son who trains with me is in a bit of a slump as well.....what he finds hard is that other people who dont seem to us to be any better than we are DO seem to have been able to grade to blue (and beyond). Sorry, thats not much help unless it helps to know you are not alone!

I never went through the blue belt blues.... though i seem to be going through the brown belt blues....
it doesnt matter what grade you are when it happens it's just a figure of speech cos it happens to most people at about blue belt...

But someone once told me that when you feel like you're not as good at things it's because you have gotten better at it and still find you need to challnge yourself further...

try not to compare yourself to other students but to how you were at say green belt, or orange or even as a new student...

see the difference in your skill then...
you will notice you are better than you think...



welcome aboard kimu....

Maybe thats where the problem lies because you think you can't, so you don't put the most into your training. As the old saying goes if think you are beaten, you usually are.

Age is just a number after all....




Another thing, you should never ever measure your karate development against somebody elses, its not a competition (unless you are entering tournaments) everyone has their own strengths and weaknesses and people learn new techniques differently and at different speeds.


Sorry just my 2 cents worth

Hi guys,

Agree with all said - it is all about your own progression and I don't think 37 or 47 is too old either . I think its just a matter of understanding your own strenghts and weaknesses and playing to your strenghts. Lets face it, starting Karate n your late 30s or 40s means we will never be as hard and fast as a 19yr old man - so its best not to try to be. As for others grading ahead of you - its understandable to wonder why - although again, progress is monitored individually, so even though you may be better, you may not have progressed as far. Does that make sense?

I also think its natural to feel as though you are getting worse from time to time. It just means that your brain had moved into concious incompetence and your training needs to catch up again to move into the concious competences phase. In other words you now know what you should be doing, but your body isn't yet doing it so all your focus is just on what you are doing wrong. Maybe thats my problem as well at the moment - but it doesn't feel that way when you are going through it!

I guess my question is, what do you focus on improving when you are aware of so many things that need work. You can only train so many times a week after all! And also, how many training sessions a week is too much?

Ahhhh, so many questions

kimu i think i know how you feel i dont think its a belt colour but we all go through these ups n downs just coming out of a downer myself and im only an 43 year old orange belt. Hasnt helped being told last week i have pneumonia (dont worry well on the mend) but thanks to good sensei's and training friends and of course a great family things getting better. The main thing appears we ALL go through it

Having moaned about being stuck on my green belt and feeling I just could not improve my Karate, I had a fantastic grading class yesterday which I managed to really enjoy and my son and I both graded to Blue!
Feeling much more relaxed about it all now.....the blues do pass!

well done katacat on the grading!!!! i think i remember what they are

Man, so I'm not the only one going through brown belt blues, if you can call it that? It's more like a total dissatisfatction with my own progress. But I'll get better, right? I have to. I must...

Welcome Kimu! =O

I think that the blues can be brought on by instructors that fail to fire the imagination of their students, of course people are going to get the blues when all they do is stand in lines performing basics.

I have seen so many karate classes like this, it is boring and I am surprised that people keep going along when it is like this.

Rocket

They usually keep going, in my personal experience, because every 1 out of 5 classes or so, you train in a class that is different to the norm.

Like, lots of kata or lots of sparring.