Expert timing.

General, Reckons

For the last few years I’ve been pretty keen on my martial arts (Seido Karate), but you know what?.. It’s pretty hard to say if it’s worth it.

  • You get treated pretty bad by some of the people who are senior to you.
  • You have to shout lame bullshit words in Japanese that even the Japanese wouldn’t bother shouting so much. This japophile samurai spirit stuff is garbage, the Japanese were barabric torturing bastards, so let’s not idealise them too much, but instead take the parts of their culture which were good, and blend them with the same from our own.
  • You have to pretend to respect people who’ve been doing it longer than you, even though they’re stupid violent shits.
  • Press-ups.
  • Getting kicked in the head, thrown on the ground, whacked with sticks, etc.

Anyway, I’m taking a bit of a break at the moment, to see if I really do enjoy it enough to keep it up. If I decide I miss it, I’ll get back in to it, if I don’t, well… I’ll just have the memories (of being sweaty, sore & broken, mostly).

The thing is, when it’s good, it’s awesome, lot’s of the people are great, wonderful friendly people. But there’s just a hint of bullshit.

It also makes you into a stealth mode fit guy (by which I mean, you wouldn’t know it to look at me that I could do a hundred pushups then fight 5 guys).

Whatever happens, I will, in the next little while, be putting a new section into my site, all about Seido. It’s something I didn’t want to talk about while I was still doing it, but now that it might be a ‘used to do’ thing, it’s much easier.