LynAlden on Nostr: Alright, here’s some backstory. Available only on the depths of Nostr. Because, I ...
Alright, here’s some backstory. Available only on the depths of Nostr.
Because, I don’t know, fuck centralized media. The best part about Nostr is that there is no “coin” for it. We’re here because we want to be here. Unlike those Web 3 people, we’re here unironically here for the tech and the decentralization.
Anyway, here goes.
My 12+ years of martial arts training was one of the most defining aspects of my life for a while, in terms of friendships, lifestyle, and what it made me into, but probably the lamest aspect of it was the anticlimactic nature in which it ended: I broke my leg.
-_-‘
Probably the constructive way of looking at it was that martial arts helped me build confidence when I needed it, and then also humbled me when I needed it, which was equally important.
Want another martial arts story? This one includes my favorite real-life character: the Irish Shihan. This guy was a living meme.
___
My father put me in martial arts from around age 7 after I came to live with him. My father was 60 at that time, and had raised a prior family but was now alone. He worked every day and so I had to take care of myself alone for long stretches of time, and I had to become adult-like quickly.
Prior to that, I had been homeless with my mother for 2-3 years, had gone deaf for a period of time from untreated ear infections that were eventually fixed by surgery, and then I had to have speech therapy since deafness leads to speech limitations at that early age. I had been anti-social for the past year or so due to these social issues and the deafness/speech issues, and so my father was like, “Jesus, I have some work to do on this one”.
My first several years in martial arts were… frankly unremarkable. I had no natural talent. I see YouTube videos of kids that can do flying backflip crazy kicks and stuff, and I had none of that. And all of this was in the 1990s before social media, so we could only go by whatever was local. Nowadays I wonder how these kids get so good at this, like does it just come naturally or did they actually practice this? Because I certainly practiced and couldn’t do anything cool like that. Maybe I just suck, I don’t know. That’s probably it.
I was taught MMA; mainly a combo of kickboxing and submission grappling with a Japanese karate backdrop culture and colored belt system and kata/weapon system, which was more popular three decades ago than today (and over time the organization began phasing out those cultural karate aspects to focus more on just pure MMA, but still has those ranks). I didn’t stand out. I progressed slowly, and was very “mid”.
I didn’t really care about it at first; I wasn’t fully invested and was more interested in playing Pokémon Red, or trying to become captain of my school mathletes team. I was bad at sports due to weak hand-eye coordination, and I felt like the only thing I really had going for me was academic achievements, so I tended to lean into that. But my father kept bringing me to martial arts which kept me grinding at it. That’s the greatest gift he ever gave me. He made me stick with it, and he drove me there four times per week, and then sat there and watched me for an hour or two, and then drove me home and gave me his thoughts on how I did.
In memory of my father and to his epic credit for those that would appreciate, he also did hook up with some (::cough:: many) of the fellow students’ moms while he was there; he was kind of an older gentleman player with top 1% outlier skill in this regard, I have to admit. His rate of hook-up success with the single moms who were each 15-25 years younger than him on average actually kind of became legendary in our community. As kids, we were all simultaneously impressed and horrified at his ability. But we’ll leave that aside; he really mostly he did this for me, which I’ll never forget. He got plenty of tail on the side for his work though, which was not his original intention, but which he wouldn’t leave on the table given his abilities, and is worth mentioning for his reputation on this un-editable Nostr protocol distributed among clients. I’ll throw my father’s epicness into this void because, well, he quietly would have enjoyed it.
Anyway, I built up a bunch of friends in the martial arts school; even more than in my academic school. It was almost like being in the military as a kid- there were official rank hierarchies, discipline, you fight each other, you run and exhaust yourself with push-ups together, you punch through wood or bricks to overcome your fears, you tell the Sensei “Osu Sensei!” in unison, etc. It’s hard not to make deep friends in that hardcore environment of shared pain and struggle with a military discipline vibe.
“You don’t know someone until you fight them” has a certain truth to it. We grew to know each other after fighting each other. You physically wrestle with someone every week and choke them out or get choked out, and you get to know them more closely than your academic friends. Sometimes awkwardly close… since it was coed. ;)
But for the first few years, I didn’t really care about it, and I wasn’t special at it, but just due to my father making me be there for so long, I became one of the more experienced students in it due to sheer attrition. And then when I became decent, I became more interested. It finally sparked a more competitive nature within me. When you go from age 7 to age 15 continually in martial arts four times per week, even if you have no natural talent, you gain so much experience at fighting that you reach the top of your class just because you’re somehow still there, and you start getting interested in it since you know the nuances of it and get more awakened toward it and want to be better at it.
In a previous Nostr post, I mentioned how my trailer park neighborhood friend Jordan had real-world fights in his backyard, and I had joined them. My martial arts fights were always controlled with proper gear, helmets, mouthpieces, close adult Sensei supervision, and so forth, whereas Jordan’s backyard fights had gloves but nothing else, and just consisted of a bunch of teens enjoying the mayhem. That environment gave me a certain real-world horror-show experience that even my fellow martial arts students mostly lacked, and it kind of woke me up and gave me an edge.
Eventually in my early teens I left the kids classes and joined the adult classes, and continued there. All of it was coed, but the kids classes were like 60/40 boy/girl whereas the adult classes were like 85/15 men/women. Amid the advanced students, it was me and then all guys.
Our school was part of a larger martial arts school federation, but on its own was small and backwater in the suburbs, especially after our former senior fifth-degree Sensei had retired. We went through a period of like, discount temporary instructors. For a while we had two co-instructors, one (very small) woman and one (very large) man, who weren’t even Sensei’s, but were Sensei’s-in-training. They were eventually replaced by a newbie sensei- some guy in his 30’s who had trained for about five years and was given the fresh rank of Sensei and was assigned this backwater school to try to turn around.
So, I’m like 15 at this point, been here for 8 years, and I have this new Sensei in his 30s with only 5 years of training coming to run things. He had basically the same skill level as me, like both of us were first-degree black belts, so unlike my original badass fifth-degree Sensei, I didn’t respect this guy. I wanted to become a second-degree black belt and this new Sensei teaching me was not yet a second-degree himself. My friends and I were like, “pfft” toward this guy. It became an ongoing tension. We needed at least a second-degree Sensei but didn’t have one.
Most aspects of the martial arts school rankings were handled internally, except for black belt tests, second-degree black belt tests, and so forth. Any formal black belt or instructor rank-up test was run federation-wide by the Shihans (the small handful of “masters” who were sixth-degree instructors and above and ran the federation) twice per year. So, we gained ground amid our individual schools in small increments and personal reputation, but had to pass external objective tests to reach key black belt and further second-degree or third-degree black belt or instructor milestones, so that there was standardization across the schools amid the elite level. And skill ranks and instructor ranks branched off once you had your first-degree black belt; there were third-degree black belts that *were not* instructors, and there were first-degree black belts that *were* instructors, because they had specifically learned and passed the tests for how to train others, which is somewhat of separate skill. But naturally, a low-rank instructor can only train people up to roughly their own skill level, which is fine most of the time since 90%+ of students were below first-degree black belt level, but was not sufficient for elite ranks trying to reach second-degree or third-degree level.
I had frankly been kind of slow to reach a black belt level (it took me from like five years age 7 to 12, whereas in some accelerated cases it only takes 2-3 years). The bigger martial arts schools amid my federation in major cities had prodigies directly trained by Shihans that reached like third-degree black belt ranks by their late teens, like three years per each rank-up starting at age 6, but at my small backwater school that wasn’t realistic. We had a weak sensei and only had some first-degree black belts, and just one college-aged second-degree black belt named Shane who was trained by the prior fifth-degree sensei and mostly didn’t come anymore and just showed up once per month or so.
By the time I was 16, I reached a weird state where I was technically the highest rank in the school out of students who showed up regularly (i.e. aside from Shane who was rarely there). There were two broad types of top fighters in the adult classes: those of us in our teens or twenties with many years of training who originally started as kids like me with 9 years of experience at this point, and those who had joined as adults for a health/fitness hobby and were more novice but were older and often bigger (30s, 40s, 50s, and with 0-3 years of experience). There was only one guy who was 40+ and also had 10+ years of training. His name was Michael and he was only a bit bigger than me and although he was one of my toughest opponents, I quickly learned how to beat him. He had stalled in his skills, his brief stamina was his weakness, and he was kind of a douchebag (he was known to abuse his own son, and none of us liked him).
So, I often went to classes and had nobody to fight and challenge me to become better. There were only a few other students of similar skill level to me, mostly in their teens or 20s and Michael his 40s, and other than the rare Shane appearance or Sensei deciding to put his gear on and spar me directly, I was at the top of the official skill rank. And then there were another handful of men that were of a lower skill level but were big enough to be a significant challenge, like this one firefighter who had just 1 year of training but was the physically strongest guy in the school. I could outfight him with speed and stamina and just had to make sure to avoid being taken down or hit hard. There was a diminishing pool of people who I could spar against to actually get better at technique, and with a Sensei who himself wasn’t any better either.
As I stalled in my skill toward my goal of second-degree black belt, I instead used the time to pass the separate federation test to become an assistant instructor, which was easy for me since it was comfortably with academic written tests. I would now run some classes, and when students wanted some private lessons to catch up, I would do that in the school. That was my first paid job.
But I started to get frustrated amid my stagnation. Many of my friends had left by this point. Other than Shane who was never here, even my Sensei who was a 6’ guy and could barely outpace me in the rare instances when he fought me, but pound-for-pound I was not impressed with him even though I couldn’t quite beat him (I was/am 5’7”). The fact that he couldn’t outright beat or submit me was proof enough for this worthlessness as an instructor in my view. My prior fifth-degree Sensei would have utterly rekt me in seconds without trying; this new guy was basically a peer that just happened to be bigger and older; he wasn’t really any better. He had nothing to teach me. I wished I was in a different school with a better teacher. The only hard opponents in my school for me to fight were the Sensei, Shane, Michael, the firefighter, and like two other old friends who had ranked up with me from the kids class for the past 5-10 years, and pound-for-pound I wasn’t learning anything anymore. I was only learning how to fight larger novice opponents.
But then when it got worse. There was a new 5’10” woman in her 30s named Rachel. She was skilled and hardworking from the start, devoted her life to it, and became a black belt in just under two years, which was a literal record pace in our school, and although I should have liked it, it instead made me kind of envious. Prior to her, all the top fighters were me and various guys. I didn’t really have a perception of rivalry with my peers, including Rachel at first. But… then she began dating the Sensei. She also quickly took the federation instructor test and passed, and the Sensei started having her run classes as the other assistant instructor, including adult classes that I was in. Like, both of us were the two assistant instructors for the Sensei, and I was a higher rank than Rachel (there were certain earned benchmarks amid black belts as they built towards their second-degree test), but she would be given authority to run a class that I was in, and was kind of assigned the senior assistant instructor status whereas I was now apparently the junior assistant instructor. Her seniority was unofficial and chalked up to age, but I felt it was biased due to their relationship. And it wasn’t just me, the other senior rank students all had general disrespect toward Rachel, not because she was bad or didn’t earn her initial first-degree black belt, but because she was elevated beyond her skill compared to the upper ranks who had been here for many years, and it was transparent to all of us. She couldn’t beat any of the top five students in a fight, including me who was smaller than her. She had among the best technique in terms of how it looked, like her kicks were flashy as hell, but she was firmly the sixth best fighter or less and was supposedly the new senior assistant instructor. I was like, “nah”.
I started to get too aggressive in sparring matches with Rachel. She was bigger, she admittedly had amazing technique and had learned fast, but she just didn’t have years of grit. She hadn’t had the shit kicked out of her before, and it showed. She hadn’t lost enough fights to learn the subtle techniques that are outside of the official curriculum. She hadn’t fought a thousand matches and earned all of those tiny lessons that can’t be taught other than to experience them. And unlike me, she hadn’t fought in Jordan’s backyard without a helmet and mouthpiece. Her kicks were way better-looking than mine when she did them alone outside of a fight. But despite being bigger than me, and flashier than me in some aspects, she simply couldn’t beat me in a fight or anywhere close, which is ultimately what matters. I had been doing this for a decade at this point. She didn’t have the experience or the grit, even if she had the flash and better natural talent, and started from a mature age. But Sensei was elevating her too quickly, and I was stagnating in my rank, and I was thinking, "what am I even doing here anymore?”
When we spar with someone, if we are better, we were supposed to go exactly 110% of our opponent’s level. Basically, it was the optimal level to help them learn- just slightly better than them. Unless you are specifically training for a test or tournament and told to go all-out against an equal, you stuck to this template. But whenever I fought against Rachel, I went purposely too hard. Just her. I had never done this before. I would outfight her by 2x, like kick her leg out and punch her down a bit too hard, and just glance at the Sensei each time as Rachel got up like, “why is she the senior assistant instructor again?” Rachel would leave each fight frustrated and likely with a headache, which is not what we are supposed to do. But I had something to prove. My goal was to mock the artificial hierarchy that was forming.
There was one day with an unusually large class of students who showed up, where I was more annoyed than usual at this ongoing situation, and I went harder than usual, like I purposely wanted to make the difference even more unmistakable this time. I kicked Rachel’s legs out so many times and outpunched her as hard as I could and kept looking at the Sensei like, “what now?” as he stood there and oversaw the class. I hurt her so much that she had trouble getting back up. Eventually after getting dropped and out-fought and hit too hard a number of times, Rachel literally said, “Okay I get it, can you go easier on me? You always do this Lyn!”
And then I… felt bad. In the middle of class I was immediately like, “Sure, of course. I’m sorry”.
And from then on, I was no longer annoyed at Rachel, but just annoyed at my own situation. Rachel had put her cards on the table, and I respected that. I had made her my rival not because I disrespected her, but because I *did* respect her and felt threatened by her. On one hand, I felt I had to demonstrate to the Sensei and others that I could easily beat Rachel since she wasn’t ready yet, and that he was biased and that she was unfit to lead adult classes, but then on the other hand, once I proved this, I had zero envy or angst toward her. I just felt sympathy, and I felt like an asshole. Once Rachel admitted that she wanted me to go easier more regularly, my entire purpose for wanting to be better became hallow.
And then I imagined the situation from her perspective; she joined the school at like age 30, became a talented hot-shot and got a black belt at a record pace, put all of her focus into it, dated the Sensei (not out of corruption, but just because of natural connection) and thus became looked at as an outsider by other students, and then felt intimidation from this existing borderline-autistic 16-year-old named Lyn that had somehow been there for 9 fucking years and that was grittier and could outfight her and had all of these multi-year friendships with other students that pre-dated her by many years as basically the head of the Mean Girl clique.
We had a big clique among experienced students, mostly in our teens and twenties, and she wasn’t in it. None of us had respected her relative to Sensei’s moving her to instructor status. Rachel felt like based on her situation she was supposed to be the best, like if anything the Sensei’s premature preference toward her and rank elevation of her had given her too much to prove, and yet she had to go to class each day with me and others and felt only intimidation and coldness, and every time she fought me it was stressful because she knew I would purposely go hard and not in a friendly way, to prove her inadequacy. So, as I thought through this, part of me was like, “Damn, am I the baddie here?”
For the next couple months, I was then on autopilot. I didn’t know what to do. I was very annoyed at my Sensei, who I felt was ultimately responsible for this, but I was purposely nicer to Rachel and told all the other senior students to be as well, since I got over my ego and our cards were more on the table now. Eventually my father voiced my (and his) concerns to the Sensei about a lack of sufficiently advanced instructor or sparring partners for my ongoing progress to reach my goals, and so Sensei decided to send me to a federation school an hour away to fight their top student, named Lionel. “The top student of my school vs the top student of our school” was how it was arranged.
I had seen Lionel before once at a federation test, and was intimidated. He was a year older, bigger, stronger, and just plain better. It would be 125 lb 5’7” me vs 150 lb 5’10” him. It was clear how this would go. My goal was not to win, but rather just to hold my own and learn something new.
Nonetheless, my father was like, “you got this”. We developed a gameplan. He was like, “okay look, admittedly if you grapple this boy you’re going to lose. But you’re faster. So, avoid his takedowns, and just try to out kickbox him. This is what you want; a fresh opponent rather than your stale opponents. And unfortunately I know the type of unsafe shenanigans you got into with Jordan’s friends. Use that. Lionel is softer than he seems, and you’re harder than you seem.” It was the best pep-talk ever.
But… it didn’t work. Lionel *broke my wrist*. The first few minutes of the fight were going okay, and I was sticking to the plan of kickboxing only, and purposely avoiding his takedown attempts. I was indeed actually out-kickboxing him. But Lionel eventually realized that if he takes me down and grapples me, it’s over, so he started prioritizing that but was having trouble due to my cautious takedown defenses. But then he got unconventional and made use of the fact that I was a far smaller opponent; after feeling my punches for a while, he just came in hard and left his ribs open. Against an opponent of his size he wouldn’t do that, but against me he realized that I likely don’t have enough damaging power and so that it’s worth the small risk in order to overcome my speed and grab me. I hit him clean in the ribs as he opened himself up and came in, but it wasn’t enough, and by throwing his defenses aside, his all-out takedown attempt worked, and he got me down. I tried to get him off of me, but he accidentally fractured my wrist with his own chest and bodyweight slamming down on me, which is a really embarrassing way of fracturing a wrist. Like the sheer power of this man’s chest broke my wrist, frankly. I never expected to win per se, but rather than having a decent pound-for-pound showing as I was hoping for like I could do even against Shane or my own Sensei, I just outright left with an injury and felt more demoralized than ever. Lionel was the assistant instructor and the top student of his school, was in his ascendent prime, had a lot to prove, and wasn’t fucking around. I cried in the car ride home, not out of pain but out of failure.
I considered quitting, like I had a busier schedule than I used to, and thought maybe I was just done with this shit now. Everybody I fought was either way worse or way bigger, like I never actually had someone to fight of similar size and skill, and figured maybe it’s time to start focusing on my academic work more anyway.
But my father stepped up yet again and was like, “Of course not. Here’s what we’re doing to do. You didn’t lose that fight due to weak technique. I watched every minute, as I always do. If he was your size, you would have won. You lost it because you were physically weaker. He overpowered you. So you’ll go to the gym now.”
So, my father took me to a local gym, and sat me down with the man who owned it, and explained that he wanted me to be stronger. He paid the guy to give me private weight-lifting lessons for the next several months. Bench-press, squats, deadlifts, etc. Just raw power. Also, one of the requirements for the second-degree black belt test was that women had to be able to do 45 continuous push-ups and men had to do 75 continuous push-ups, but my father told the gym owner that he wanted me to be able to do 90 push-ups. His view was, “They have a requirement, and I want her to double it.” I could do about 55 at the time. So, I started to go to class a bit less, and train here a bit more. I indeed got to 90+ push-ups, and a 2x bodyweight max deadlift.
And eventually, I decided to leave my martial arts school. I decided to start driving an hour away to the center city every evening to a major school within the federation. I decided I would do all or nothing with my time. The teacher there had the rank of Shihan which meant “master” He was one of the federation-wide leaders. His school was much bigger. He was a small 50-year-old Irish guy who was not much taller than me, maybe 5’8 and 150 lb, but whenever you touched him he literally felt like he was made of iron, and any student, big or small, old or young, who fought him got immediately rekt. It was almost magical how solid he was, like you couldn’t move him an inch, and I had never felt that before. It wasn’t gimmicky bullshit as some martial arts stuff is; he was just basically the hardest Irishmen ever born who then did three decades of training. I had fought hundreds of kids and adults, but Shihan felt like fucking solid iron; it’s hard to explain. Like most people if you push them their flesh will move, whereas if you push him you will push yourself back and barely even flex his skin. It was weird, like solid iron. He looked, seemed, and felt like he had come out of a Guy Ritchie movie. I had seen him fight my former weak-ass Sensei a year prior, and it wasn’t even a fight. It was over before it started, Shihan had choked Sensei out in under a minute, even though Shihan was smaller than Sensei.
That’s who I wanted to learn from. Driving distance didn’t matter to me anymore; I just wanted the best; it was Shihan or nothing. He had pictures on the walls of his dojo when he was younger and kicking through like five baseball bats at once. At the time, he also briefly held the world record for how many ice bricks he could put his fist through at once, although that record was later surpassed. At one event I saw him do this at where he punched through like 1500 lbs of ice, someone took a series of pictures with a motion camera that is meant for athletes, and after they were developed, the pictures showed Shihan winding up but then the actual moment where he hammer-fisted through the ice was a blur; it was too fast for the camera even though it was specifically meant to capture fast athlete movements and the photographer said he had never seen this happen before when taking athlete photos. I was like, “okay… this Shihan is my superhero now”.
And so I started at this new, larger school. I went from being the big fish in a small pond to a medium fish in a big pond. I was one of the technical higher ranks, but there were several students above me, and Shihan was very intimidating. The top four people in the adult class were all guys, and I was the fifth highest rank. But there was also this prodigy girl in the kids class who was like 12 and could do crazy backflip kicks and shit, and was going for her second degree black belt at the same time as me even though I was like 17 by this point. She would be one of those third-degree prodigies by my age, which made me feel lame. So I was like, “fuck my life, I should have come here to train from Shihan from the start”.
The first few months were like a stereotype karate kid movie. Shihan had some subtle initial animosity toward me because he didn’t like the fact that me as the known top student of my school was coming to join his school; he was a leader over many schools and didn’t want to create rivalries or student pilgrimages between schools, and my transfer to his school did create a small flood of other students joining his school, which disrupted things. So, he purposely was a bit harsh on me from the start, but I understood this and was all for it. I was all-in on this guy. Whenever he was mean I was like, “yes Shihan, may I have another.”
Shihan almost never complimented people. He was a small, stern, 50s, made-of-iron Irish guy who looked deep into your soul and found it badly wanting. His infamy extended amid the federation for 100 miles in all directions. Students of many schools in the area feared him. If he was showing you something, he’d be like, “No. Wrong. Again. No. Do this instead. No. No. Bad. No. Okay that wasn’t terrible; do that again. Your left elbow was slightly too far out, which left your ribs slightly exposed. Lower it five degrees so that you get hit less there while still defending your key jawline. That’s the optimal angle.”
My prior discount Sensei never had that level of detail. He was always like, “you’re doing fine” which from his standards was fine because the elite students were as good as him. Whereas Shihan saw through every tiny error. He had seen decades of errors and had that level of expertise that matters.
Never once did Shihan compliment me by that point, and not once did I see Shihan’s face in anything other than a scorn, and yet it all felt right. I had known this ahead of time. He had a certain vibe where you felt like you were getting better just by being around him after enough training hours, by him pointing out your subtle errors and telling you how you suck, and by fighting other students in the school who were great. I wasn’t the only student who felt that way; he was one of the only five Shihans in the entire federation for a reason. You got better almost just by being in his presence. And as a metric, the less he said that you sucked, the better you were getting. Him not saying anything meant you were actually doing pretty good. And indeed my technique improved a ton by being there for several months. I was training five or six days per week now, which was a big burden after school. Two hours of training, plus over an hour and a half round trip travel, each night six days per week. Every time Shihan gave me a new tip or comment, it was something that was literally new to me, pointing out a weakness of mine, and helped me level up. He’d be like, “No. No. No. Bad. Terrible. No. No. Okay close… do this instead.” And that thing he would describe was like magic.
At one point I was submission grappling against his #2 student, who was the biggest. He was aged 18, 175 pounds, vs me aged 17 and 125 pounds. He got me in a guillotine headlock and was trying to submit me, and I was struggling in it for a couple minutes and he couldn’t finalize the submission since I knew all the ways to get out of it or at least protect my front throat blood vessels. Shihan was watching this and said out loud, “She’s tough, isn’t she? Jesus.” And like, that one statement compliment flooded over me. He never said stuff like that. I eventually broke out of the guillotine, and although I couldn’t submit him due to his size and strength, he couldn’t submit me either. I went home and was like, “Shihan actually said something nice, dad; he said I was tough, and he never says this!” And he was so proud.
I became friends with many other students at that city school, women and men. I could easily beat every other woman, and although I couldn’t beat the top four of Shihan’s men, I could hold my own against them and not get submitted in a fight, which pound-for-pound is more than I could ask for and was a win.
Shihan would sometimes mess around and fight two top students at once, 1vs2, even some of which were bigger than him since he was not a large man, but even so it was never a fight. He never lost. One day it was me and that #2 student vs Shihan. I told my teammate, “Okay, frankly you can stand up to Shihan longer than me, so you distract him, and then I’ll try to choke him”, and he acknowledged. So this guy goes all-out against Shihan, started to get rekt quickly, and as Shihan was distracted I then jumped on Shihan’s back for my signature choke that I’m unusually good at, that works against anyone regardless of their size. There was a brief moment where I could tell Shihan was like, “shit”, but then he stepped it up a level and immediately knocked the wind out of my teammate and just reached back and somehow grabbed me, like gripped my shirt on my mid-back with his iron fist, basically digging deep into my back-skin itself and basically my soul, and flipped me over himself toward the ground in a way that I had never seen happen before. My larger teammate was also lying there down by this point all of a sudden, and I was down too now. And Shihan, stone-faced, was like, “Not bad, you two were better than usual. Close.” And later we were like, “omg, Shihan said it was close.” Nobody had gotten close.
Eventually Shihan sent me to the second-degree black belt test at the federation for my third try, after having skipped the prior to semi-annual tests, and this time… and it was outright easy. I fought against people my own size for a change which is what happens at these tests, and it wasn’t hard at all. It felt like I had been training with weighted gear at Shihan’s school the whole time, and then at the test it was like I took them off and felt, “Wait, that’s it, is this easy mode? That’s what it’s like to fight someone my size now?” So, I earned my second-degree black belt comfortably. I took me a decade from my start to get there, which was pretty slow. But I did it. I learned more under Shihan in like 8 months than the past several years under my prior discount Sensei.
I then continued at the school as one of the leaders.
And then Shihan wanted me to enter a big tournament, and said I had the knack to go far, and I began training for it. But one day when I was sparring against one of the other top several students; he happened to kick me in the side of the knee, and broke it. He was 6’ but unusually skinny and only 135 lbs, vs my 5’7” 125 lbs, basically the weakest of the top male students and easiest for me to spar with, and someone who was never considered a major offensive threat. Me and this student had fought dozens of times, we weren’t going hard at all, but just some random undefended light kick on the side of the kneecap broke it out of nowhere. I fell, and got back up, but could tell it was off. I tried to keep going anyway but then realized something was seriously wrong, so I went and sat down.
It was so… anticlimactic. I had many cool fights with peers where we had went all-out, but this wasn’t one of them. This was a boring, unemotional, routine sparring match. But his kick happened to hit the side of my knee in the perfect spot for a crack. I had broken my thumb, broken my wrist, but this one was bigger. This would change things.
I drove myself home, and my father was already asleep. I figured, “This can’t be much, I’ve dealt with injuries before. So, I slept. But as I woke up the next morning with the adrenaline gone, I was in terrible pain. I couldn’t walk at all. When I went from the bedroom to the bathroom in the morning, I had to literally crawl. It was de-humanizing. My father gave me his cane to use, and even then it was hard to walk with due to how much my leg hurt. I could put zero weight on it.
So, my father took me to the clinic and I had a scan. The doctor said my ligament was probably torn, that I’ll probably need surgery, and in the meantime he put a giant needle into my kneecap and sucked out two cups of blood, which today is still the most painful experience I’ve had but helped reduce the acute pain afterward. My father had to help hold me down for that one because I was willing to fight him over that one. And then after looking at the scan the doctor was like, “Excellent news. Your leg is fractured”. And I was like, “…what?” And he said, “Oh, fractures are way better than torn ligaments. See here? Your ligament is pulled, but not torn. This line here? That’s a fracture through your femur right above the knee, but not a messy break. So instead of surgery, you just need a brace and to stay off your foot for six weeks on crutches. You’re very lucky.” I was on crutches and with a leg brace, but otherwise could just continue on. I almost had to be at my senior prom on crutches, but managed to end them slightly prematurely and dance at my prom normally.
But that ended my martial arts training. I called Shihan on the phone and explained that I would miss the tournament, and then I had to go to college so… this was it for now. By the time I fully recovered a few months later, I graduated high school, got a summer job as a deli clerk (much less glamorous than my prior job of assistant martial arts instructor), and then went to college. I did a bit of casual fighting in college but overall kept it easy. I had passed my prime, and my priority was elsewhere.
Several months later, I had one college friend in particular, Jeff, who was a physical specimen with no prior training, like 6’ 180 lbs, and well-defined musculature. He challenged me to a fight once, and I submitted him within seconds with a choke, because as I described in my recent Nostr post, there are certain “Fool’s Mate” techniques that work well against bigger opponents that don’t know what they are doing. So, he tried multiple times and I tapped him out each time despite the size difference. But each time, I explained in detail what I did, and each time, the fight got longer and was harder since he would avoid the easy losses and start to use his strength and size better. That gap between me and him, due to our size and skill difference, could only close toward his advantage. Eventually, we built his technique to the point where I couldn’t tap him out anymore, but he still couldn’t tap me out. That was my discount college Sensei experience, trying to use my training for people with better physical potential than me, to pass on some of my experience. I lived vicariously through Jeff.
But even in my professional life, it stuck with me. My father was like, “Most people are intimidated by their bosses. In an interview, imagine sparring your boss and how flimsy he would be. Don’t be intimidated. You’re not locked in there with him. He’s locked in there with you. Your boss is likely physically a pussy, so keep that in mind.” While I never fought a boss of course, that mindset was useful for interviews and future interactions. Basically the advice was like, “don’t submit to the corporate hierarchy.” And I never did. I work for myself now, but every boss I had has been cool. If they were not, I would have left.
My right thumb still makes clicking sounds from the time when I broke it in Shihan’s school, and my left knee still makes cracking sounds if I stand up from a deep squat, even though it doesn’t hurt. Luckily my fractured wrist from Lionel healed more fully so I don’t have signs from that one. These injuries are with me forever.
Looking back, I felt that most of my academic schooling was unremarkable, and that it was my martial arts schooling that defined my coming-of-age years. It was where I had my closest friends, biggest triumphs, biggest losses, biggest character developments, and like, what I still remember clearly after two decades.
My rise was important to my confidence. I saw that I could be a source of power in my local world. My struggle with Rachel was important for my ethical development. My search for another school, my gains there, and my ultimate injury, was important for my humility. Despite my local power, I was small in the grand scheme of things, and a random injury could change my trajectory.
I highly recommend martial arts, especially for kids in safe environments. The overall character building and fitness you get from it is really useful. My father eventually passed away, and when I look back on it, I just think about how several days per week after work, he would drive me to martial arts and sit there and watch me and then drive me home. He was so involved time-wise. And when things got rough, he would support me, motivate me, and help me problem solve through specific issues. There were no participation trophies, just discussions on how to win next time. Despite all his shortcomings, part of him is always a legend to me because of how involved he was, especially in my martial arts training above everything else.
Whenever I feel weak due to burnout or whatever reason nowadays, I just think of my late father and am like, “Okay, I know, yes I shouldn’t be a bitch, yes there is a constructive path forward.” And I stand back up.
Because, I don’t know, fuck centralized media. The best part about Nostr is that there is no “coin” for it. We’re here because we want to be here. Unlike those Web 3 people, we’re here unironically here for the tech and the decentralization.
Anyway, here goes.
My 12+ years of martial arts training was one of the most defining aspects of my life for a while, in terms of friendships, lifestyle, and what it made me into, but probably the lamest aspect of it was the anticlimactic nature in which it ended: I broke my leg.
-_-‘
Probably the constructive way of looking at it was that martial arts helped me build confidence when I needed it, and then also humbled me when I needed it, which was equally important.
Want another martial arts story? This one includes my favorite real-life character: the Irish Shihan. This guy was a living meme.
___
My father put me in martial arts from around age 7 after I came to live with him. My father was 60 at that time, and had raised a prior family but was now alone. He worked every day and so I had to take care of myself alone for long stretches of time, and I had to become adult-like quickly.
Prior to that, I had been homeless with my mother for 2-3 years, had gone deaf for a period of time from untreated ear infections that were eventually fixed by surgery, and then I had to have speech therapy since deafness leads to speech limitations at that early age. I had been anti-social for the past year or so due to these social issues and the deafness/speech issues, and so my father was like, “Jesus, I have some work to do on this one”.
My first several years in martial arts were… frankly unremarkable. I had no natural talent. I see YouTube videos of kids that can do flying backflip crazy kicks and stuff, and I had none of that. And all of this was in the 1990s before social media, so we could only go by whatever was local. Nowadays I wonder how these kids get so good at this, like does it just come naturally or did they actually practice this? Because I certainly practiced and couldn’t do anything cool like that. Maybe I just suck, I don’t know. That’s probably it.
I was taught MMA; mainly a combo of kickboxing and submission grappling with a Japanese karate backdrop culture and colored belt system and kata/weapon system, which was more popular three decades ago than today (and over time the organization began phasing out those cultural karate aspects to focus more on just pure MMA, but still has those ranks). I didn’t stand out. I progressed slowly, and was very “mid”.
I didn’t really care about it at first; I wasn’t fully invested and was more interested in playing Pokémon Red, or trying to become captain of my school mathletes team. I was bad at sports due to weak hand-eye coordination, and I felt like the only thing I really had going for me was academic achievements, so I tended to lean into that. But my father kept bringing me to martial arts which kept me grinding at it. That’s the greatest gift he ever gave me. He made me stick with it, and he drove me there four times per week, and then sat there and watched me for an hour or two, and then drove me home and gave me his thoughts on how I did.
In memory of my father and to his epic credit for those that would appreciate, he also did hook up with some (::cough:: many) of the fellow students’ moms while he was there; he was kind of an older gentleman player with top 1% outlier skill in this regard, I have to admit. His rate of hook-up success with the single moms who were each 15-25 years younger than him on average actually kind of became legendary in our community. As kids, we were all simultaneously impressed and horrified at his ability. But we’ll leave that aside; he really mostly he did this for me, which I’ll never forget. He got plenty of tail on the side for his work though, which was not his original intention, but which he wouldn’t leave on the table given his abilities, and is worth mentioning for his reputation on this un-editable Nostr protocol distributed among clients. I’ll throw my father’s epicness into this void because, well, he quietly would have enjoyed it.
Anyway, I built up a bunch of friends in the martial arts school; even more than in my academic school. It was almost like being in the military as a kid- there were official rank hierarchies, discipline, you fight each other, you run and exhaust yourself with push-ups together, you punch through wood or bricks to overcome your fears, you tell the Sensei “Osu Sensei!” in unison, etc. It’s hard not to make deep friends in that hardcore environment of shared pain and struggle with a military discipline vibe.
“You don’t know someone until you fight them” has a certain truth to it. We grew to know each other after fighting each other. You physically wrestle with someone every week and choke them out or get choked out, and you get to know them more closely than your academic friends. Sometimes awkwardly close… since it was coed. ;)
But for the first few years, I didn’t really care about it, and I wasn’t special at it, but just due to my father making me be there for so long, I became one of the more experienced students in it due to sheer attrition. And then when I became decent, I became more interested. It finally sparked a more competitive nature within me. When you go from age 7 to age 15 continually in martial arts four times per week, even if you have no natural talent, you gain so much experience at fighting that you reach the top of your class just because you’re somehow still there, and you start getting interested in it since you know the nuances of it and get more awakened toward it and want to be better at it.
In a previous Nostr post, I mentioned how my trailer park neighborhood friend Jordan had real-world fights in his backyard, and I had joined them. My martial arts fights were always controlled with proper gear, helmets, mouthpieces, close adult Sensei supervision, and so forth, whereas Jordan’s backyard fights had gloves but nothing else, and just consisted of a bunch of teens enjoying the mayhem. That environment gave me a certain real-world horror-show experience that even my fellow martial arts students mostly lacked, and it kind of woke me up and gave me an edge.
Eventually in my early teens I left the kids classes and joined the adult classes, and continued there. All of it was coed, but the kids classes were like 60/40 boy/girl whereas the adult classes were like 85/15 men/women. Amid the advanced students, it was me and then all guys.
Our school was part of a larger martial arts school federation, but on its own was small and backwater in the suburbs, especially after our former senior fifth-degree Sensei had retired. We went through a period of like, discount temporary instructors. For a while we had two co-instructors, one (very small) woman and one (very large) man, who weren’t even Sensei’s, but were Sensei’s-in-training. They were eventually replaced by a newbie sensei- some guy in his 30’s who had trained for about five years and was given the fresh rank of Sensei and was assigned this backwater school to try to turn around.
So, I’m like 15 at this point, been here for 8 years, and I have this new Sensei in his 30s with only 5 years of training coming to run things. He had basically the same skill level as me, like both of us were first-degree black belts, so unlike my original badass fifth-degree Sensei, I didn’t respect this guy. I wanted to become a second-degree black belt and this new Sensei teaching me was not yet a second-degree himself. My friends and I were like, “pfft” toward this guy. It became an ongoing tension. We needed at least a second-degree Sensei but didn’t have one.
Most aspects of the martial arts school rankings were handled internally, except for black belt tests, second-degree black belt tests, and so forth. Any formal black belt or instructor rank-up test was run federation-wide by the Shihans (the small handful of “masters” who were sixth-degree instructors and above and ran the federation) twice per year. So, we gained ground amid our individual schools in small increments and personal reputation, but had to pass external objective tests to reach key black belt and further second-degree or third-degree black belt or instructor milestones, so that there was standardization across the schools amid the elite level. And skill ranks and instructor ranks branched off once you had your first-degree black belt; there were third-degree black belts that *were not* instructors, and there were first-degree black belts that *were* instructors, because they had specifically learned and passed the tests for how to train others, which is somewhat of separate skill. But naturally, a low-rank instructor can only train people up to roughly their own skill level, which is fine most of the time since 90%+ of students were below first-degree black belt level, but was not sufficient for elite ranks trying to reach second-degree or third-degree level.
I had frankly been kind of slow to reach a black belt level (it took me from like five years age 7 to 12, whereas in some accelerated cases it only takes 2-3 years). The bigger martial arts schools amid my federation in major cities had prodigies directly trained by Shihans that reached like third-degree black belt ranks by their late teens, like three years per each rank-up starting at age 6, but at my small backwater school that wasn’t realistic. We had a weak sensei and only had some first-degree black belts, and just one college-aged second-degree black belt named Shane who was trained by the prior fifth-degree sensei and mostly didn’t come anymore and just showed up once per month or so.
By the time I was 16, I reached a weird state where I was technically the highest rank in the school out of students who showed up regularly (i.e. aside from Shane who was rarely there). There were two broad types of top fighters in the adult classes: those of us in our teens or twenties with many years of training who originally started as kids like me with 9 years of experience at this point, and those who had joined as adults for a health/fitness hobby and were more novice but were older and often bigger (30s, 40s, 50s, and with 0-3 years of experience). There was only one guy who was 40+ and also had 10+ years of training. His name was Michael and he was only a bit bigger than me and although he was one of my toughest opponents, I quickly learned how to beat him. He had stalled in his skills, his brief stamina was his weakness, and he was kind of a douchebag (he was known to abuse his own son, and none of us liked him).
So, I often went to classes and had nobody to fight and challenge me to become better. There were only a few other students of similar skill level to me, mostly in their teens or 20s and Michael his 40s, and other than the rare Shane appearance or Sensei deciding to put his gear on and spar me directly, I was at the top of the official skill rank. And then there were another handful of men that were of a lower skill level but were big enough to be a significant challenge, like this one firefighter who had just 1 year of training but was the physically strongest guy in the school. I could outfight him with speed and stamina and just had to make sure to avoid being taken down or hit hard. There was a diminishing pool of people who I could spar against to actually get better at technique, and with a Sensei who himself wasn’t any better either.
As I stalled in my skill toward my goal of second-degree black belt, I instead used the time to pass the separate federation test to become an assistant instructor, which was easy for me since it was comfortably with academic written tests. I would now run some classes, and when students wanted some private lessons to catch up, I would do that in the school. That was my first paid job.
But I started to get frustrated amid my stagnation. Many of my friends had left by this point. Other than Shane who was never here, even my Sensei who was a 6’ guy and could barely outpace me in the rare instances when he fought me, but pound-for-pound I was not impressed with him even though I couldn’t quite beat him (I was/am 5’7”). The fact that he couldn’t outright beat or submit me was proof enough for this worthlessness as an instructor in my view. My prior fifth-degree Sensei would have utterly rekt me in seconds without trying; this new guy was basically a peer that just happened to be bigger and older; he wasn’t really any better. He had nothing to teach me. I wished I was in a different school with a better teacher. The only hard opponents in my school for me to fight were the Sensei, Shane, Michael, the firefighter, and like two other old friends who had ranked up with me from the kids class for the past 5-10 years, and pound-for-pound I wasn’t learning anything anymore. I was only learning how to fight larger novice opponents.
But then when it got worse. There was a new 5’10” woman in her 30s named Rachel. She was skilled and hardworking from the start, devoted her life to it, and became a black belt in just under two years, which was a literal record pace in our school, and although I should have liked it, it instead made me kind of envious. Prior to her, all the top fighters were me and various guys. I didn’t really have a perception of rivalry with my peers, including Rachel at first. But… then she began dating the Sensei. She also quickly took the federation instructor test and passed, and the Sensei started having her run classes as the other assistant instructor, including adult classes that I was in. Like, both of us were the two assistant instructors for the Sensei, and I was a higher rank than Rachel (there were certain earned benchmarks amid black belts as they built towards their second-degree test), but she would be given authority to run a class that I was in, and was kind of assigned the senior assistant instructor status whereas I was now apparently the junior assistant instructor. Her seniority was unofficial and chalked up to age, but I felt it was biased due to their relationship. And it wasn’t just me, the other senior rank students all had general disrespect toward Rachel, not because she was bad or didn’t earn her initial first-degree black belt, but because she was elevated beyond her skill compared to the upper ranks who had been here for many years, and it was transparent to all of us. She couldn’t beat any of the top five students in a fight, including me who was smaller than her. She had among the best technique in terms of how it looked, like her kicks were flashy as hell, but she was firmly the sixth best fighter or less and was supposedly the new senior assistant instructor. I was like, “nah”.
I started to get too aggressive in sparring matches with Rachel. She was bigger, she admittedly had amazing technique and had learned fast, but she just didn’t have years of grit. She hadn’t had the shit kicked out of her before, and it showed. She hadn’t lost enough fights to learn the subtle techniques that are outside of the official curriculum. She hadn’t fought a thousand matches and earned all of those tiny lessons that can’t be taught other than to experience them. And unlike me, she hadn’t fought in Jordan’s backyard without a helmet and mouthpiece. Her kicks were way better-looking than mine when she did them alone outside of a fight. But despite being bigger than me, and flashier than me in some aspects, she simply couldn’t beat me in a fight or anywhere close, which is ultimately what matters. I had been doing this for a decade at this point. She didn’t have the experience or the grit, even if she had the flash and better natural talent, and started from a mature age. But Sensei was elevating her too quickly, and I was stagnating in my rank, and I was thinking, "what am I even doing here anymore?”
When we spar with someone, if we are better, we were supposed to go exactly 110% of our opponent’s level. Basically, it was the optimal level to help them learn- just slightly better than them. Unless you are specifically training for a test or tournament and told to go all-out against an equal, you stuck to this template. But whenever I fought against Rachel, I went purposely too hard. Just her. I had never done this before. I would outfight her by 2x, like kick her leg out and punch her down a bit too hard, and just glance at the Sensei each time as Rachel got up like, “why is she the senior assistant instructor again?” Rachel would leave each fight frustrated and likely with a headache, which is not what we are supposed to do. But I had something to prove. My goal was to mock the artificial hierarchy that was forming.
There was one day with an unusually large class of students who showed up, where I was more annoyed than usual at this ongoing situation, and I went harder than usual, like I purposely wanted to make the difference even more unmistakable this time. I kicked Rachel’s legs out so many times and outpunched her as hard as I could and kept looking at the Sensei like, “what now?” as he stood there and oversaw the class. I hurt her so much that she had trouble getting back up. Eventually after getting dropped and out-fought and hit too hard a number of times, Rachel literally said, “Okay I get it, can you go easier on me? You always do this Lyn!”
And then I… felt bad. In the middle of class I was immediately like, “Sure, of course. I’m sorry”.
And from then on, I was no longer annoyed at Rachel, but just annoyed at my own situation. Rachel had put her cards on the table, and I respected that. I had made her my rival not because I disrespected her, but because I *did* respect her and felt threatened by her. On one hand, I felt I had to demonstrate to the Sensei and others that I could easily beat Rachel since she wasn’t ready yet, and that he was biased and that she was unfit to lead adult classes, but then on the other hand, once I proved this, I had zero envy or angst toward her. I just felt sympathy, and I felt like an asshole. Once Rachel admitted that she wanted me to go easier more regularly, my entire purpose for wanting to be better became hallow.
And then I imagined the situation from her perspective; she joined the school at like age 30, became a talented hot-shot and got a black belt at a record pace, put all of her focus into it, dated the Sensei (not out of corruption, but just because of natural connection) and thus became looked at as an outsider by other students, and then felt intimidation from this existing borderline-autistic 16-year-old named Lyn that had somehow been there for 9 fucking years and that was grittier and could outfight her and had all of these multi-year friendships with other students that pre-dated her by many years as basically the head of the Mean Girl clique.
We had a big clique among experienced students, mostly in our teens and twenties, and she wasn’t in it. None of us had respected her relative to Sensei’s moving her to instructor status. Rachel felt like based on her situation she was supposed to be the best, like if anything the Sensei’s premature preference toward her and rank elevation of her had given her too much to prove, and yet she had to go to class each day with me and others and felt only intimidation and coldness, and every time she fought me it was stressful because she knew I would purposely go hard and not in a friendly way, to prove her inadequacy. So, as I thought through this, part of me was like, “Damn, am I the baddie here?”
For the next couple months, I was then on autopilot. I didn’t know what to do. I was very annoyed at my Sensei, who I felt was ultimately responsible for this, but I was purposely nicer to Rachel and told all the other senior students to be as well, since I got over my ego and our cards were more on the table now. Eventually my father voiced my (and his) concerns to the Sensei about a lack of sufficiently advanced instructor or sparring partners for my ongoing progress to reach my goals, and so Sensei decided to send me to a federation school an hour away to fight their top student, named Lionel. “The top student of my school vs the top student of our school” was how it was arranged.
I had seen Lionel before once at a federation test, and was intimidated. He was a year older, bigger, stronger, and just plain better. It would be 125 lb 5’7” me vs 150 lb 5’10” him. It was clear how this would go. My goal was not to win, but rather just to hold my own and learn something new.
Nonetheless, my father was like, “you got this”. We developed a gameplan. He was like, “okay look, admittedly if you grapple this boy you’re going to lose. But you’re faster. So, avoid his takedowns, and just try to out kickbox him. This is what you want; a fresh opponent rather than your stale opponents. And unfortunately I know the type of unsafe shenanigans you got into with Jordan’s friends. Use that. Lionel is softer than he seems, and you’re harder than you seem.” It was the best pep-talk ever.
But… it didn’t work. Lionel *broke my wrist*. The first few minutes of the fight were going okay, and I was sticking to the plan of kickboxing only, and purposely avoiding his takedown attempts. I was indeed actually out-kickboxing him. But Lionel eventually realized that if he takes me down and grapples me, it’s over, so he started prioritizing that but was having trouble due to my cautious takedown defenses. But then he got unconventional and made use of the fact that I was a far smaller opponent; after feeling my punches for a while, he just came in hard and left his ribs open. Against an opponent of his size he wouldn’t do that, but against me he realized that I likely don’t have enough damaging power and so that it’s worth the small risk in order to overcome my speed and grab me. I hit him clean in the ribs as he opened himself up and came in, but it wasn’t enough, and by throwing his defenses aside, his all-out takedown attempt worked, and he got me down. I tried to get him off of me, but he accidentally fractured my wrist with his own chest and bodyweight slamming down on me, which is a really embarrassing way of fracturing a wrist. Like the sheer power of this man’s chest broke my wrist, frankly. I never expected to win per se, but rather than having a decent pound-for-pound showing as I was hoping for like I could do even against Shane or my own Sensei, I just outright left with an injury and felt more demoralized than ever. Lionel was the assistant instructor and the top student of his school, was in his ascendent prime, had a lot to prove, and wasn’t fucking around. I cried in the car ride home, not out of pain but out of failure.
I considered quitting, like I had a busier schedule than I used to, and thought maybe I was just done with this shit now. Everybody I fought was either way worse or way bigger, like I never actually had someone to fight of similar size and skill, and figured maybe it’s time to start focusing on my academic work more anyway.
But my father stepped up yet again and was like, “Of course not. Here’s what we’re doing to do. You didn’t lose that fight due to weak technique. I watched every minute, as I always do. If he was your size, you would have won. You lost it because you were physically weaker. He overpowered you. So you’ll go to the gym now.”
So, my father took me to a local gym, and sat me down with the man who owned it, and explained that he wanted me to be stronger. He paid the guy to give me private weight-lifting lessons for the next several months. Bench-press, squats, deadlifts, etc. Just raw power. Also, one of the requirements for the second-degree black belt test was that women had to be able to do 45 continuous push-ups and men had to do 75 continuous push-ups, but my father told the gym owner that he wanted me to be able to do 90 push-ups. His view was, “They have a requirement, and I want her to double it.” I could do about 55 at the time. So, I started to go to class a bit less, and train here a bit more. I indeed got to 90+ push-ups, and a 2x bodyweight max deadlift.
And eventually, I decided to leave my martial arts school. I decided to start driving an hour away to the center city every evening to a major school within the federation. I decided I would do all or nothing with my time. The teacher there had the rank of Shihan which meant “master” He was one of the federation-wide leaders. His school was much bigger. He was a small 50-year-old Irish guy who was not much taller than me, maybe 5’8 and 150 lb, but whenever you touched him he literally felt like he was made of iron, and any student, big or small, old or young, who fought him got immediately rekt. It was almost magical how solid he was, like you couldn’t move him an inch, and I had never felt that before. It wasn’t gimmicky bullshit as some martial arts stuff is; he was just basically the hardest Irishmen ever born who then did three decades of training. I had fought hundreds of kids and adults, but Shihan felt like fucking solid iron; it’s hard to explain. Like most people if you push them their flesh will move, whereas if you push him you will push yourself back and barely even flex his skin. It was weird, like solid iron. He looked, seemed, and felt like he had come out of a Guy Ritchie movie. I had seen him fight my former weak-ass Sensei a year prior, and it wasn’t even a fight. It was over before it started, Shihan had choked Sensei out in under a minute, even though Shihan was smaller than Sensei.
That’s who I wanted to learn from. Driving distance didn’t matter to me anymore; I just wanted the best; it was Shihan or nothing. He had pictures on the walls of his dojo when he was younger and kicking through like five baseball bats at once. At the time, he also briefly held the world record for how many ice bricks he could put his fist through at once, although that record was later surpassed. At one event I saw him do this at where he punched through like 1500 lbs of ice, someone took a series of pictures with a motion camera that is meant for athletes, and after they were developed, the pictures showed Shihan winding up but then the actual moment where he hammer-fisted through the ice was a blur; it was too fast for the camera even though it was specifically meant to capture fast athlete movements and the photographer said he had never seen this happen before when taking athlete photos. I was like, “okay… this Shihan is my superhero now”.
And so I started at this new, larger school. I went from being the big fish in a small pond to a medium fish in a big pond. I was one of the technical higher ranks, but there were several students above me, and Shihan was very intimidating. The top four people in the adult class were all guys, and I was the fifth highest rank. But there was also this prodigy girl in the kids class who was like 12 and could do crazy backflip kicks and shit, and was going for her second degree black belt at the same time as me even though I was like 17 by this point. She would be one of those third-degree prodigies by my age, which made me feel lame. So I was like, “fuck my life, I should have come here to train from Shihan from the start”.
The first few months were like a stereotype karate kid movie. Shihan had some subtle initial animosity toward me because he didn’t like the fact that me as the known top student of my school was coming to join his school; he was a leader over many schools and didn’t want to create rivalries or student pilgrimages between schools, and my transfer to his school did create a small flood of other students joining his school, which disrupted things. So, he purposely was a bit harsh on me from the start, but I understood this and was all for it. I was all-in on this guy. Whenever he was mean I was like, “yes Shihan, may I have another.”
Shihan almost never complimented people. He was a small, stern, 50s, made-of-iron Irish guy who looked deep into your soul and found it badly wanting. His infamy extended amid the federation for 100 miles in all directions. Students of many schools in the area feared him. If he was showing you something, he’d be like, “No. Wrong. Again. No. Do this instead. No. No. Bad. No. Okay that wasn’t terrible; do that again. Your left elbow was slightly too far out, which left your ribs slightly exposed. Lower it five degrees so that you get hit less there while still defending your key jawline. That’s the optimal angle.”
My prior discount Sensei never had that level of detail. He was always like, “you’re doing fine” which from his standards was fine because the elite students were as good as him. Whereas Shihan saw through every tiny error. He had seen decades of errors and had that level of expertise that matters.
Never once did Shihan compliment me by that point, and not once did I see Shihan’s face in anything other than a scorn, and yet it all felt right. I had known this ahead of time. He had a certain vibe where you felt like you were getting better just by being around him after enough training hours, by him pointing out your subtle errors and telling you how you suck, and by fighting other students in the school who were great. I wasn’t the only student who felt that way; he was one of the only five Shihans in the entire federation for a reason. You got better almost just by being in his presence. And as a metric, the less he said that you sucked, the better you were getting. Him not saying anything meant you were actually doing pretty good. And indeed my technique improved a ton by being there for several months. I was training five or six days per week now, which was a big burden after school. Two hours of training, plus over an hour and a half round trip travel, each night six days per week. Every time Shihan gave me a new tip or comment, it was something that was literally new to me, pointing out a weakness of mine, and helped me level up. He’d be like, “No. No. No. Bad. Terrible. No. No. Okay close… do this instead.” And that thing he would describe was like magic.
At one point I was submission grappling against his #2 student, who was the biggest. He was aged 18, 175 pounds, vs me aged 17 and 125 pounds. He got me in a guillotine headlock and was trying to submit me, and I was struggling in it for a couple minutes and he couldn’t finalize the submission since I knew all the ways to get out of it or at least protect my front throat blood vessels. Shihan was watching this and said out loud, “She’s tough, isn’t she? Jesus.” And like, that one statement compliment flooded over me. He never said stuff like that. I eventually broke out of the guillotine, and although I couldn’t submit him due to his size and strength, he couldn’t submit me either. I went home and was like, “Shihan actually said something nice, dad; he said I was tough, and he never says this!” And he was so proud.
I became friends with many other students at that city school, women and men. I could easily beat every other woman, and although I couldn’t beat the top four of Shihan’s men, I could hold my own against them and not get submitted in a fight, which pound-for-pound is more than I could ask for and was a win.
Shihan would sometimes mess around and fight two top students at once, 1vs2, even some of which were bigger than him since he was not a large man, but even so it was never a fight. He never lost. One day it was me and that #2 student vs Shihan. I told my teammate, “Okay, frankly you can stand up to Shihan longer than me, so you distract him, and then I’ll try to choke him”, and he acknowledged. So this guy goes all-out against Shihan, started to get rekt quickly, and as Shihan was distracted I then jumped on Shihan’s back for my signature choke that I’m unusually good at, that works against anyone regardless of their size. There was a brief moment where I could tell Shihan was like, “shit”, but then he stepped it up a level and immediately knocked the wind out of my teammate and just reached back and somehow grabbed me, like gripped my shirt on my mid-back with his iron fist, basically digging deep into my back-skin itself and basically my soul, and flipped me over himself toward the ground in a way that I had never seen happen before. My larger teammate was also lying there down by this point all of a sudden, and I was down too now. And Shihan, stone-faced, was like, “Not bad, you two were better than usual. Close.” And later we were like, “omg, Shihan said it was close.” Nobody had gotten close.
Eventually Shihan sent me to the second-degree black belt test at the federation for my third try, after having skipped the prior to semi-annual tests, and this time… and it was outright easy. I fought against people my own size for a change which is what happens at these tests, and it wasn’t hard at all. It felt like I had been training with weighted gear at Shihan’s school the whole time, and then at the test it was like I took them off and felt, “Wait, that’s it, is this easy mode? That’s what it’s like to fight someone my size now?” So, I earned my second-degree black belt comfortably. I took me a decade from my start to get there, which was pretty slow. But I did it. I learned more under Shihan in like 8 months than the past several years under my prior discount Sensei.
I then continued at the school as one of the leaders.
And then Shihan wanted me to enter a big tournament, and said I had the knack to go far, and I began training for it. But one day when I was sparring against one of the other top several students; he happened to kick me in the side of the knee, and broke it. He was 6’ but unusually skinny and only 135 lbs, vs my 5’7” 125 lbs, basically the weakest of the top male students and easiest for me to spar with, and someone who was never considered a major offensive threat. Me and this student had fought dozens of times, we weren’t going hard at all, but just some random undefended light kick on the side of the kneecap broke it out of nowhere. I fell, and got back up, but could tell it was off. I tried to keep going anyway but then realized something was seriously wrong, so I went and sat down.
It was so… anticlimactic. I had many cool fights with peers where we had went all-out, but this wasn’t one of them. This was a boring, unemotional, routine sparring match. But his kick happened to hit the side of my knee in the perfect spot for a crack. I had broken my thumb, broken my wrist, but this one was bigger. This would change things.
I drove myself home, and my father was already asleep. I figured, “This can’t be much, I’ve dealt with injuries before. So, I slept. But as I woke up the next morning with the adrenaline gone, I was in terrible pain. I couldn’t walk at all. When I went from the bedroom to the bathroom in the morning, I had to literally crawl. It was de-humanizing. My father gave me his cane to use, and even then it was hard to walk with due to how much my leg hurt. I could put zero weight on it.
So, my father took me to the clinic and I had a scan. The doctor said my ligament was probably torn, that I’ll probably need surgery, and in the meantime he put a giant needle into my kneecap and sucked out two cups of blood, which today is still the most painful experience I’ve had but helped reduce the acute pain afterward. My father had to help hold me down for that one because I was willing to fight him over that one. And then after looking at the scan the doctor was like, “Excellent news. Your leg is fractured”. And I was like, “…what?” And he said, “Oh, fractures are way better than torn ligaments. See here? Your ligament is pulled, but not torn. This line here? That’s a fracture through your femur right above the knee, but not a messy break. So instead of surgery, you just need a brace and to stay off your foot for six weeks on crutches. You’re very lucky.” I was on crutches and with a leg brace, but otherwise could just continue on. I almost had to be at my senior prom on crutches, but managed to end them slightly prematurely and dance at my prom normally.
But that ended my martial arts training. I called Shihan on the phone and explained that I would miss the tournament, and then I had to go to college so… this was it for now. By the time I fully recovered a few months later, I graduated high school, got a summer job as a deli clerk (much less glamorous than my prior job of assistant martial arts instructor), and then went to college. I did a bit of casual fighting in college but overall kept it easy. I had passed my prime, and my priority was elsewhere.
Several months later, I had one college friend in particular, Jeff, who was a physical specimen with no prior training, like 6’ 180 lbs, and well-defined musculature. He challenged me to a fight once, and I submitted him within seconds with a choke, because as I described in my recent Nostr post, there are certain “Fool’s Mate” techniques that work well against bigger opponents that don’t know what they are doing. So, he tried multiple times and I tapped him out each time despite the size difference. But each time, I explained in detail what I did, and each time, the fight got longer and was harder since he would avoid the easy losses and start to use his strength and size better. That gap between me and him, due to our size and skill difference, could only close toward his advantage. Eventually, we built his technique to the point where I couldn’t tap him out anymore, but he still couldn’t tap me out. That was my discount college Sensei experience, trying to use my training for people with better physical potential than me, to pass on some of my experience. I lived vicariously through Jeff.
But even in my professional life, it stuck with me. My father was like, “Most people are intimidated by their bosses. In an interview, imagine sparring your boss and how flimsy he would be. Don’t be intimidated. You’re not locked in there with him. He’s locked in there with you. Your boss is likely physically a pussy, so keep that in mind.” While I never fought a boss of course, that mindset was useful for interviews and future interactions. Basically the advice was like, “don’t submit to the corporate hierarchy.” And I never did. I work for myself now, but every boss I had has been cool. If they were not, I would have left.
My right thumb still makes clicking sounds from the time when I broke it in Shihan’s school, and my left knee still makes cracking sounds if I stand up from a deep squat, even though it doesn’t hurt. Luckily my fractured wrist from Lionel healed more fully so I don’t have signs from that one. These injuries are with me forever.
Looking back, I felt that most of my academic schooling was unremarkable, and that it was my martial arts schooling that defined my coming-of-age years. It was where I had my closest friends, biggest triumphs, biggest losses, biggest character developments, and like, what I still remember clearly after two decades.
My rise was important to my confidence. I saw that I could be a source of power in my local world. My struggle with Rachel was important for my ethical development. My search for another school, my gains there, and my ultimate injury, was important for my humility. Despite my local power, I was small in the grand scheme of things, and a random injury could change my trajectory.
I highly recommend martial arts, especially for kids in safe environments. The overall character building and fitness you get from it is really useful. My father eventually passed away, and when I look back on it, I just think about how several days per week after work, he would drive me to martial arts and sit there and watch me and then drive me home. He was so involved time-wise. And when things got rough, he would support me, motivate me, and help me problem solve through specific issues. There were no participation trophies, just discussions on how to win next time. Despite all his shortcomings, part of him is always a legend to me because of how involved he was, especially in my martial arts training above everything else.
Whenever I feel weak due to burnout or whatever reason nowadays, I just think of my late father and am like, “Okay, I know, yes I shouldn’t be a bitch, yes there is a constructive path forward.” And I stand back up.