From football to Martial Arts, a journey into the absolute unknown! How I gave up playing football and accidentally ended up doing a martial art I’d never heard of before!
For many years, I used to play football and absolutely loved it. Playing in a football team is like nothing else - not only are football games just plain exciting, but more than anything it’s the fact you are in a team with your friends. The friendships you make in football last a lifetime and most of my friends are people I know through football, whether it was as 7 year old kids having a knock about through to playing veterans football. I feel very lucky to have played in some great teams with even better teammates!
As I drifted into my early 40s, even veterans football was getting too much. I was picking up injuries and had a young son too. A combination of these meant that I just didn’t have the time to play and be around for him at weekends. Something had to give and sadly I had to give up playing football.
For a few years, I didn’t really miss football which surprised me but maybe being with our son took my mind off it. I missed the camaraderie of being part of a team, the thrill of competition, and the physical intensity of matches.
For a few years after quitting football, I honestly thought I’d never take up another sport. Sure, I did running but I never did it for anything other than to keep fit.
One day, my son asked if he could do karate. I said I’d look for a club for him and I’d take him down to the lessons and stay with him as he was also a bit nervous. Fortunately, there was a karate club at our local sports centre and a relative was a member. More than that, he was a red belt and he said to us it was quite a high level! We were suitably impressed and we decided to go to see what it was like.
When we walked into the room, it was quite intimidating! I had no idea that there was a Korean version of karate called Tang Soo Do!I had heard of Tae Kwon Do though which is also another Korean martial art.
I sat down and our son wandered off to join the class, next to his red-belt cousin.
The lesson started and I had absolutely no idea what was going on, but all these other people seemed to! All I could hear was some people shouting “Anna” and I thought she must be an instructor - I later learnt that “Ha Na” is Korean for the number 1!
My son loved it and wanted to go back for another lesson and of course, I said I would. On the second lesson, I was enthralled watching these people kick and punch pads! I could also see it was great exercise. And exactly what a 40-something year old should be doing to keep fit!
I also realised that this was a class that I could do with our son too. Normally when I took him to football, tennis, fencing etc lessons I had to sit and watch but with karate there was plenty of parents doing it with their kids and that really appealed to me.
After the third or fourth lesson I knew I wanted to do it. I’ll be honest, I was nervous though as I’d never done anything like it before. But I decided to walk up to the Master and ask if I could join in.
He said yes. And that’s how it started.
You can read about what it was like in the first lesson!