Karate Lessons - Strategic Thinking, Calculated Risks

One of the more startling things I took away from my second-to-last conversation with my old Sensei – one of the things that made it the second-to-last conversation (see The Schism) – was when she asked me how I was incorporating karate into my life outside the dojo.

It is a good question, but what startled me was that my sensei even had to ask it. It showed how far apart we had become in our practice and how little involvement they had in my day-to-day.

Let me start with inside the dojo – we were a few years into COVID at the time of this conversation so my training was entirely in my home dojo, a space that she had seen pictures of and could see it was quite spacious. I was reviewing kata and bunkai every night after my kids went to bed in preparation for my sandan exam so karate was pretty front-and-center in my life at that time. 

However, karate was still a major part of my life in the years before COVID. I had joined a local Goju-ryu dojo that trained once a week for a 2-hour session. This was a small group of karate-ka and often enough I was the only person training with Sensei. In addition to this I discovered a way to book space at the local elementary school and was training on my own for an hour each week. Finally, I was also part of a local boxing gym where my wife and I would hit the heavy bags two or three times a week in the group training classes – not karate exactly, but directly relevant fitness training.

So, taken together, I would classify the 3-4 years prior to this conversation as keeping up on my training if not actively advancing in my training. My old sensei knew about this work, but I don’t know if they had a clear picture of the scope or how it was valued by them. It was my way to construct an inside the dojo training regimen without a full-time dojo to attend. I thought it worked pretty well…

Anyway, I bring this up because clearly I had to structure my life outside the dojo in a certain way to create this inside the dojo routine for myself. I valued my karate practice enough to 1) find a relevant dojo locally, 2) find a way to train independently on my own, 3) find a relevant fitness routine and 4) make the time for all this on top of a full-time job. None of that fell into place - I put it in place!

Alright, that being said, the original question - how are you incorporating karate into your life outside the dojo - was more philosophical than physical. Again, I feel that someone who knew me better or who was paying closer attention to my life would also have found the answer pretty apparent.

One of the major purposes or themes of karate is self-defense. While there are plenty of techniques to defend against physical attacks, the art is also heavy on avoiding conflict, defusing conflict, redirecting it. Hence the focus on politeness, the idea of meeting hard with soft, “powerful gentleness”, maintaining balance, etc.

Even more broadly, the exercise of karate has great health benefits for the practitioner, the meditative aspects help calm or focus the mind, the social aspects help build a supportive community. 

There is a focus on self-reflective practice (thinking carefully about what you are doing) in an effort to identify your own weaknesses or vulnerabilities. There is also a recognition that you are on a path, that your work today is building towards future goals, and small steps in the right direction are what is needed.

I view all of this as self-defense because it helps defend the practitioner against the challenges of life (especially aging). 

I’ve tried to take this "karate outlook" to heart in my own life. Now I am naturally risk-averse so thinking about minimizing vulnerability, moving from a position of strength, maintaining balance… all that is right up my alley. I couldn’t say whether I am risk-averse because of my karate studies or if my karate studies simply mesh with my natural aversion to risk, but regardless, I’ve tried to navigate life as I imagine a karate-ka would.

Let me give a few examples of this –

College

Like most people, I made plenty of bad decisions in college. But I think I got two main ones right: what I chose to study and where I chose to study.

I studied physics in college. I really enjoyed physics in high school. It didn’t come naturally to me although I found it to be rewarding as well as challenging. I was never one of those people who stayed up reading physics books or dreaming of physics experiments or anything like that. But in Physics I saw a worthy field of study, something I could learn and something that would improve me in the learning of it (sounds like karate, right?). I also figured physics was broad enough to provide a range of career options down the road, but also specific enough that it would get me into the sciences.

So first choice done. I’m going to push myself to study something challenging, but ultimately rewarding. In the end I would have a respectable degree and a sharper mind. Check.

The second choice follows from the first one. Of all the things about physics, I recognized the most important thing was that it was something I could not learn on my own. I’d need a teacher for this.

More than that, I’d need help with it! The college I ended up going to was a small liberal arts school with a focus on engineering. This worked to my advantage in two ways – 

• First, all those engineers needed to take various Physics courses, so there was a quite large physics faculty.  
• Second, because the school was small, there weren’t many actual Physics majors. Most of my upper-level classes had 4-5 students. In some I was the only student.

The college had a real focus on teaching (over research, which is common at larger schools) and with so few students to focus on I was getting essentially private lessons in physics directly from the faculty.

Thinking strategically really worked for me here. I identified my goal (a BS degree in 4 years), where I was vulnerable in achieving that goal (needed instruction in the field), and what situation would set me up best for success (a small school focused on teaching with a large physics faculty). To me, I was thinking like a karate-ka at every step. Furthermore, I relied heavily on what I learned in karate about making small incremental progress, not shying from the hard work, and being self-reflective about your training to stick with that program and graduate with honors. 

Graduate School

Ok so at this point I’m feeling fly about my B.S. in Physics, thinking that the world in my oyster. What to do now? Here’s my second example of thinking like a karate-ka –

Turns out a bachelor's degree isn’t very useful for actually working in the sciences. Most fields, like physics, really require a PhD, although certain fields you can break in with a Masters. Basically, if I wanted a career in the sciences, I would probably need more schooling at some point.

When? I figured that coming out of college, I was at the peak of my learning ability. I was “in shape” for coursework and studying and test-taking so I would be able to handle the graduate work better now than if I found a job and returned to school in a few years. Furthermore, I knew how hard it would be to return to school from the work force – any job I found would certainly pay more than graduate work – so I decided to go directly into graduate school.

Where? I had done some laboratory research during my undergraduate work, but I wasn’t great at it. However, I knew that aPhD dissertation is built on original research, so I would need an involved advisor to really show me the ropes of researching. I also felt that, although I was a good student, I wasn’t the next coming of Einstein. So the Princeton Plasma Physics Lab or the Harvard-Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory probably weren’t going to let me in.

I decided a large state school would be my best bet for several reasons –

·       A large state school would have more faculty and more graduate student slots to fill, hence it would be easier for me to get in and find interesting work.

·       A large state school would have more research resources within any given department and across the entire university. Stuff like supercomputing resources and advanced microscopes.

·       A large state school would also have the name recognition to get internships and job offers as well as network within the field.

Again, as for the karate strategizing, I knew I would need more education for the science-focused career that I wanted. It seemed riskier to put that education off instead of diving directly into it. But to maximize my chances of a starting a successful career I chose a large state school that I would be more likely to get accepted to, that would expose me to a much larger array of research resources than smaller schools (or more competitive schools), and that would have connections and name recognition that I could leverage once I left.

By and large, this decision worked out too. I was able to take a huge range of classes across the University during my time there as well as (assistant) teach a huge array of courses in my own department. In fact, my first job out of school came from a course I audited, not within my own department, but from a different part of the university altogether. I knew a large school would have opportunities that I wasn’t aware of, but that I could take advantage of if I kept my eyes and ears open for them. I didn’t know enough at 22 to make a “final” career decision, but my graduate school choice gave me more skills while keeping a range of options open.

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There’s two examples that I think show how karate training influenced my thinking and outlook on the world. I believe that I have been living my karate values outside the dojo in a very real and very consequential way. I think this now and I thought it well before the conversation with my old sensei took place.

So it was jarring to hear my old sensei question it. And, once more in hindsight, it was telling that they even had to. I mean… where I went to college and what I chose to study? These aren’t deep dark secrets I’ve been harboring; they are fairly standard bits of information that you could expect friends and family to know.

When someone close to you reveals how little they actually know about you, that is telling you something. It told me that it was time to step away from this person. Hmm, I'll have to follow up on this post with a more strategic look at that decision. 

But look, as much as I love the physical training of karate, the history and tradition of the art, and other aspects, for me this strategic perspective has been a major component of my life. It's tough to build a life, it's tough to make something of yourself, and few of us are blessed to have those pieces just fall into place. I think the karate mindset of self-defense and slow improvement over time have been critical to my successes in life. And (God willing) it will continue to serve me well for the remainder of my time here.

 

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*We trained out of a dance studio next to our old dojo for 2 hours on Saturdays following the “1 room school house” model where all ages trained together for most of the time. It wasn’t enough time to teach and although Sensei made it a point to bump me up from Shodan to nidan-ho to nidan, I just felt the training was lackluster, especially at a time when I was an energetic teenager. It felt like I was wasting my potential. But I thought that remaining through the lean years would pay dividends later once I got out of the lower black belt ranks. Jokes on me, it became a case of “out of sight, out of mind” when I moved away for graduate school. In hindsight, I should have joined the dojo two towns over!