Karate with Covid Restrictions

July 11, 2020

Here at a not ‘normal’ time for writing. A friend introduced me to a zoom writing retreat starting 10:30am UK time and I decided that since I was floundering with my writing it would be wise to join. So here I am at my low dining table desk in our spare room, at almost 6pm, with a view of the roofs of Dunman School just below; Mountbatten HDB’s to my right, and further back to the left the Stadium Dome. I’ve had an early start to my day with teaching a karate class on just 5 hours sleep. But I am a week into my ear infection meds, and the ear pain is reduced, and living with the side-effects of anti-biotics is much easier now. I am feeling ok. 

I’ve been grappling with organising my karate classes. 

When everything shutdown we were cut off from training together. It came at a right time for me, as I was feeling a bit of fatigue at the sameness of things – many things, not just karate – and needed an inward focus. The fatigue was more to do with not being able to write at all, even though three days a week I stared at my screen for a couple of hours before giving up in frustration. It was the driest spell I’d experienced since I started writing about seven years ago. I thought not having to focus on training would free up time to kick-start my writing. 

But that didn’t happen. 

The world was grappling with coronavirus and many countries had shut down much before Singapore had. Dojos everywhere were wrestling with this change. To help us, our Chief instructor began creating online training videos and sharing them. Though I had planned to slow down my karate training for a bit those videos were too precious to resist, and I began training with them first twice a week and then more often – creating my own lessons when I didn’t have a video to train with. Someone in our dojo asked for zoom lessons and within weeks of the shutdown I was self-training five days and teaching one lesson a week. Though it was a big adjustment that process felt natural and easy. 

Martial arts teaches you many things and one is to adapt and I/we did to the changed circumstances. Luckily, it is not my business and I didn’t suffer financial hardships the way many teachers did and still are. 

But now that we are opening up, I’m finding it very hard to organise. Everyone wants to train together again but we are not allowed to train in groups larger than five and with safe distance measures. Using an outdoor space means that we can break into two groups of five in the same area, and I have a senior black belt who loves teaching with whom I can rotate the groups. But outdoor spaces are not easy to find – particularly with the uncertainty of rain in this season. We did find what we thought was an ideal covered public spot but were told it is attached to a community centre and we would have to leave if they had a class that clashed with ours. 

Our old gym, where 8-10 would train easily, now only accommodates five. And it is much too expensive to hire another indoor space with the restriction of not having more than five people in the room. 

And then there is the lack of contact. Without training with a partner, practicing attack defence drills, without kakie (push hands) how does one know what techniques work and against whom? Which ones won’t work at all with a larger, stronger attacker and what to do instead? How would one learn about distancing and timing without close range partner training? Will the practice of moving basics and kata help with those? Maybe after this time is done, we will be able to see how effective these have been.

Those are the practical issues of training with covid restrictions – the where, what and how of things. 

But there is also another issue that lies underneath the practical challenge. In a sense the why of it. Why do I teach? It definitely is not just to help build strength and stamina, impart technique, to improve a person’s response to attack. How many fights will my students get into in their lifetime? There is another reason for it – a move towards perfection, towards becoming a more whole and more aware person, more caring even. The teaching of traditional karate involves a lot of basics, repetition and kata, along with body conditioning. Being a slow leaner who has severe issues with body co-ordination I have benefitted from this way of learning. On the physical level I have more strength and stamina and improved technique. Kata a repeated set of movements, which emulates fighting against imaginary opponents, has been challenging to learn, but it has helped me learn to move, to change direction quickly, to control my legs and hands, co-ordinate, react and most importantly become absorbed. On another level the essence of what I have learnt has seeped into other aspects of my life. I find myself able to endure more, have more resilience when challenged, have staying power, especially when going through those dry spells when nothing seems to work. Like right now with my writing and some other aspects of life. 

The way I learnt is the way I want to teach. Karate and life intermingling. My co-teacher and I have very different ideas and values about karate and his relationship to karate is different from mine. I have worried that this would confuse what I want to transmit in the dojo. Also not sticking around and chatting post class stops those conversations that pop up around the underlying aspects of martial arts -- why we learn and what we want to do with it. 

I don’t know what it is about writing which resolves things as words appear on paper or a screen. I think I’ve had a ‘Eureka’ moment, a realisation. Behind this dilemma is a need to control the outcome. I believe in the benefits of traditional karate and some part of me wants my students to believe in them too and I fear that splitting the teaching might shift their thinking in a different direction. But I see that I need not worry, just teach and transmit what I can and let each person find his/her own way and relationship to karate. 

I need to just trust the process and let go. 

So now I am back to grappling with the practical aspects again. How to use the inside space, how to split the class – juniors and seniors, or mixed, where to find an outdoor space where there is shelter to run to in case of rain. What type of training can replace the benefits of partner training.

The sky has now lost its brightness, dusk is here. Over in the distance in the direction of the stadium dome I see a pinkish glowing streak in the grey cloudy sky. It is my favourite time of day. We will have a lunch/dinner break soon and then a few more writing hours. Not sure what I will write in the second half of this retreat. The arid spell with writing is less dry but like sand in a windy desert, it still is wandering, scattered and not able to find a form or focus.