Have there been times in your life, when you ever felt like giving up?
Or, how many times in your life have you given up on something?
Like work, school, family and friends, training karate regularly requires discipline and time management.
It can be tiring, rewarding, all at once.
No one ever said that learning and training in Kyokushin Karate is fast and easy.
In fact, with every sweat dropped, every worn muscle, every knuckle red from punching; it brings you a little closer to greater heights.
I came across some really old photographs from one of Shihan Patrick’s veteran members and it makes me wonder what it is exactly that kept him, Shihan Patrick and many others in this martial art for so long.
Can you recognise which is Shihan Patrick?
Punggol Training Camp, 1987
Veteran member Senpai Melvern is now re-training, not alone but together with his son, Hector who is 9 years old. I was told that Senpai Melvern had started training in around 1986. Whereas Shihan Patrick had started his first training as early as in 1979!
It became more apparent to me that it is passion and sheer determination that Shihan Patrick and many of the old members have. I remembered how Shihan Patrick has never classified members as “come and go” as how we usually term people in our lives, where go probably means gone. He has always placed them in his category of “active and inactive”.
Somehow, I believed that in Shihan Patrick’s heart, the inactive members will always be active one day when they are ready to resume.
It’s never a lonely journey, you will not be alone in Kyokushin Karate training.
The feeling of training together towards a common passion is something rare and almost indescribable. It’s as if we are comrades, marching shoulder to shoulder towards the same destination.
This entry is dedicated to those who have been inactive in training for a month, a year or a decade.
Put on your gi and your belt, it’s time to continue where you left off.
Put on your gi and your belt, it’s time to continue where you left off.
Osu
