The last couple of weeks I have been sidelined with injury, so my physical activities have been limited to riding an exercise bike, yoga and pilates, (everything is on the mend now though ) so I have been thinking a lot about my karate.

For me I guess I don't do karate for a lot of the reasons the people on this forum do, I am not a die hard karate fanatic, and I read some of the posts on here and go "what the?". My motivations mainly are for self defence and to have a bit of fun, as well as the occassional "wow, didn't know I could do that!". For me I will never be competitive at karate, tried that a couple of times and the nerves got too much for me.

I guess sometimes I am a little envious at the enthusiam shown by fellow martial artists, and have been pondering these last couple of weeks the question "should I keep going if my motivations aren't the same as those people I train with and because of this am I being counter productive to other peoples development?"

My two cents? Yes, you should.
It isn't written anywhere that you have to train for a particular reason. It's enough that you want to train.

I think that perhaps you are searching for reasons not to train if that's foremost in your mind. No-one who genuinely wants to train/learn in anything will give a stuff about the rest of the class - that's teachers problem....
...and since in this instance the 'rest of the class' is actually me I can categorically state that that is not a valid reason to stop training.

Everybody trains for their own reasons. Often the reasons for you start training aren't the same reasons you keep going weeks/months/years later. Actually I think that's a point that students and teachers should both keep in mind.

If, say, you only keep training to learn new stuff, practice it and get reasonably good at it so that you can then say "look at me, I could never do this before" and get a good feeling about something, then isn't that enough? Other people might say not, were you to ask. But they're training for their own reasons too and they don't have to be the same reasons.

Personally I think that someone who trains to become a great fighter and wants to go hard with everyone to test themselves would be best suited to training with someone whose primary goal is to produce great fighters, the rest of the population don't usually want to get hurt in what is essentially a pastime.

Asking "why do you train" doesn't always get truthful answers either. Often people will answer with what they think is expected rather than their real reason. Ofttimes the reasons given are self defence or fitness when in truth it may be just a way of avoiding spending the night on the lounge in front of the tv or to meet people. Sometimes people start because they think it'd be cool to learn a MA but they don't usually say this.


Mick

At Christmas two seemingly identical children might get an identical gift. One will open it and tears of joy will run down the face. The other might open the gift with screams of delight, enough to wake the neighbors.

Just because the reaction was totally different, it doesnt mean the gift didnt have the same impact.

Just because you do not show a 'die hard' interest in what you do, and just because others do show it. It doesnt mean that our interest in karate are dissimilar.
It would seem to me, Mel that you have your life and karate in a good balance. Whilst others & I will talk nothing other than MA. You on the other hand are prepared to discuss MA as willingly and probably as frequantly as talking about a bargin in the supermarket. This sugests to me that MA isnt an object of your extreme interest like most, but its a way of life. You dont do karate, you live it. In my personal opinion, Mel, you've got the balance just right.

Counter productive to others? I would say that it is their fault, not yours. I go so that I can train. If they need someone to blame for their lack of interest or whatever, I would say, without doubt, it's not your doing, Mel.

As Neo said to Agent Smith in the climactic battle:

Smith: "Why do you struggle and fight? You can't win - can't you see that? Why do you go on?"

Neo: "Because I choose to."

And as the Oracle always said "We cannot see past an event we haven't already made a decision on."

Which means, if you quit, then you have already chosen to do so. Or that you cannot get past a blockage unless you decide to try to.

Where am I going with this???

Thanks for all the positive feedback guys, I really appreciate it!

I AM going to get back to training very soon

For those of you I don't train with, I went back to training tonight.

It was a kind of spur of the moment thing, I decided on the train on the way home that I was gonna go to training... and I did!

There are still a few things I am not up to physically doing yet, but in time that will come. (in hindsight body combat was prolly not the best thing for me, but we live and learn) My knee gave me a few twinges of pain throughout the evening, but nothing a few painkillers won't fix.

Just for a bit of fun I tried to see if I could still remember some of the GKR kata's (sorry Mick I will be more focused next week) and I still can

Not to mention you worked out the glitch in the kata we WERE supposed to be doing too! And learned a new... um..... method.......

Glad to hear you got back to training Mel. Take care with that knee though. Give it plenty of opportunity to recover.

And remember, karate isn't just for the young and fit. Even old giffers with dodgy knees like mine can train if they do so in a manner that is appropriate for their bodies (not the instructors body or the body of a teenager, but their own).

Its not clear to me from your first post why you thought you might hold other people back. You should just train at your own pace and not worry about anyone else. OK, we both know that you only get out as much as you put in, but if you're happy with that then surely that's OK.

Mike