Monday - 9/13/16 Welcome Home

Nostalgia was thick as I pulled up.  Fall is finally in the air a bit, and since I started training, way back in 93 in the winter, I always associate cool air and training.  I'm a 5th dan and I've been training for so long, but I still get a bit of an adrenaline rush when I pull into the parking lot.  "Who's going to be in tonight, who will teach, what will we do" the questions flood my mind and overload it.  It's an awesome feeling.

I was really early - I prefer to always be really early, I secretly imagine I train under Coach Couzo, and his first rule was "Do not be late, don't ever be late" - so I'm sitting quietly in the parking lot.  As is often the case, my mind wonders back to my mid teens, when my two cousins would have been with me, and we'd be getting dropped off at the school after high school for two of us.  Those were such good times, and times when the aforementioned questions would have had greatly different potential answers.  The thing is, I know who will be in class, for the most part, and I know who is teaching.

I get dressed, and get out on the floor, awkwardly holding both my uniform bag and my sparring equipment bag, and not really knowing where to stand because there is a kids class going on, and there are parent trying to watch their kids and I don't want to block sight lines.  I follow some of the regulars to a portion on the side of the room.  The instructor of the kids class, a man that trains regularly in the class I teach is discussing proper respect for martial arts elders and they stop and bow to the masters on the side (as there are now 4-5 of us).  He's a fantastic teacher, and though I once held his job, and had young eyes hanging on my every word, I wonder how he does it, because those days seem like an eternity ago and I honestly don't remember.

Class ends, and I look across the room as the kids leave, and I see someone I never thought I'd ever see again.  There in front of me is my first ever student when I ran my own TKD program in our school's ill fated 2nd location.  He was my first black belt.  This random night that I decided to start my journey back to good TKD shape has yielded a treasure.

We didn't always see eye to eye, he and I, but I was proud of his TKD at the end.  He left to go explore what other arts could do for him - and I respect that.  I'm happy to see him, and though I don't really like to show much emotion at class, I hug him, because he was my first student and even though we didn't see eye to eye, he was loyal and got his first dan under me - one of three people that I got to tie the entire belt on, though I had help from my favorite training partner towards the later part of my three black belts' training.

So class starts, another one of my Tuesday regulars (and my scuba diving partner) is running warmup.  It's novel, and I'm impressed with his command of class, not that I expect anything less from a former military man, but still, I know he doesn't teach often, and I'm impressed.  He'll have some things to learn about running an effective warmup, inexperience mistakes, but good exercises.  I'm loose when class proper starts.

Holy crap this is so hard.  I spend the first part of class wondering if my groin will go out on me first or if I'll have to run off the floor and vomit first.  Of course I'm wondering what the hell I am doing out here.  There are older and younger people around me, but I feel so out of place.  I'm my own worst critic, and I absolutely hate what I see in the mirror.  I can't kick high any more.  I've lost it, I used to kick so good, and so high, now I'm focusing on my technique, and focusing on kicking without leaning.  My core is relatively strong thanks to PT for a back injury, but everything else is way out of TKD shape.  It's hard.  I remind myself that I don't teach TKD for a living any more.  I sit behind a desk for 8 hours a day, and then I come home and do dad things. - In my late teens and early 20s, I lived at home, had few bills and to pay and spent about 28-30 hours in a TKD school. When I didn't have cleaning to do, or lesson plans to write, I was training.  I can't hold myself to those standards.  I have to reinvent myself for 38 years old, and I tighten my resolve.

Still, it's very hard, and I get through class without getting hurt, or vomiting - which is always a win in my book.  This was the metric that I carried in my last 4 ice hockey seasons in the first couple of games when I wasn't quite in shape yet.  No reason to change the metric. 

The one place where I can shine, forms practice, doesn't go how I hoped.  We practiced low forms only tonight, and though I have neglected almost all of my training, my high forms are strong, and there is muscle memory there, so I have more endurance for them. 

I walked in the door pretty bummed.  I'm going to need a lot of work, and I'm never going to be where I was in my 20s.  I've had a minor hip surgery for crying out loud, and recently gave up playing hockey because my hips just can't take it.  This is ok, this is what getting older (and having not so awesome genes) gets you.  My wife talks me down from a not so high mental cliff, reminding me when I childishly say "God, I looked so bad, I can't imagine what other people thought"that good students (like the ones we train with) are concerned about themselves not their classmates.  She's right, and it does me a world of good to hear it. 

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As I proofread (probably poorly because I am whooped) this post, I realize that it doesn't paint a pretty picture.  I'm whiny and soft.  I've been away too long but even though it was difficult, I didn't give up.  I put one proverbial foot in front of the other and moved forward.  I don't have much to show for it, but it is how all great things start - very small.  In the words of Pai Mei from Kill Bill - "THIS IS THE BEGINNING".  And so it is.  This is my take away, it starts by starting, that's the secret to getting back in there.  It's going, it's pushing through the pain, and thinking rationally that things changed.  Then you can really start.