Opps! 3

 

 

Written by Guss Wilkinson 2006

 

You may get the impression from reading these articles that injuries are common place in Karate. This is not true if you eliminate clubs that indulge in full contact competition sparring which, thankfully, most do not.

 

An insurance company in Sweden published research that it had conducted on sports injuries in Sweden and at the top of the list were definitely Ice-Hockey, Soccer and Downhill Skiing. Karate was rated somewhere between Badminton and Curling in terms of injury risk.

I like to call our Karate a discipline rather than a sport. For me, the term sport conjures up visions of some sort of game with points being scored. Although most karate clubs do see it this way, we don’t – the purpose for our training is quite serious even if we don’t take ourselves too seriously.

 

For us, learning about, becoming proficient at and developing self defence is a hobby that we find stimulating and interesting. And like any hobby/interest group, it is also a means and an excuse for socialising and making friends.

But injuries do happen. They are generally light and recovery is almost always 100% without any further complication. In fact, the most serious karate injury that I have witnessed is when I broke Helena’s nose.

 

The reason that injuries are not more serious than they are is because of the level of skill that is developed and the discipline of being able to launch a technique with full speed and power, but pulling it back in the last fraction of a second to a contact of no more that light skin touch.

 

If we didn’t do this, then injuries would be extremely severe and the damage more or less permanent. In fact, the whole point of the drills that we practise is to maximise the severity of the damage that we are able to inflict on an aggressor with maximum efficiency – i.e. most effect with least effort. The real discipline is apparent in the ability to regulate the damage we wish to inflict from a level of very light skin touch to total devastation.

 

But every so often we tend to get a wake up call (both as perpetrator and as victim) when we either make an unintentional contact or we receive a knock of sorts. We may have inflicted hurt or we may have become hurt but the pain is accompanied by an amazement at how little it took to hurt or get hurt and the question sort of becomes: “Holy shit, how would that have looked if that technique had been allowed to retain its full speed and power?”

 

One such incident comes to mind (one out of many, I might add).

 

The year must have been about 1991 or 1992 and Helena and I were practising in our Dojo. We ran a club at a school hall in one of the suburbs of Stockholm called Tallkrogen but we also had our own Dojo in the cellar of our house.

 

I so miss having the luxury of being able to just disappear down to our own purpose built Dojo to do an hours training for myself whenever I felt like it instead of walking down to our garage as we do now, move the bikes and the lawnmower out of the way, sweep the floors and get out the equipment that we wish to use – only to have to put it all back afterwards.

Sometimes I wonder if we will ever be wealthy enough to afford what we once had.

 

At a push, we could fit 10 people in our private Dojo and we sometimes used it to hold high grade courses and instructor training sessions.

 

Our Dojo had one wall fully mirrored, we had a selection of makiwaras, a television/video hanging from the ceiling so we could watch instructional videos and practise at the same time. We also had stretching machines, focus mitts, kicking pads, a punching bag and judo mats close at hand. The best bit was the fact that we had a Sauna and showers next to our Dojo. It was always warm there, unlike our garage today.

 

The Dojo opened up into our garage that was also under the house – we could never use the garage to keep our car in during the winter as it was impossible to drive the car out of the garage and make it up the steep driveway when there was so much snow and ice. So we had an extra makiwaras set up in the garage and we also had a table tennis table that was permanently set up.

We would have a party for our students at the end of every term during which our Dojo would be transformed into our own private bar/restaurant – those parties were legendary!

 

Helena and I were practising together in our Dojo as we often did and we were sparring. As usual, I had the height weight and reach advantage (a luxury that I don’t often enjoy as I am only 170 cm tall).

 

During the sparring session, I tricked Helena into stepping left by feigning an attack with my left hand. As soon as she stepped to the left, I clocked her head lightly with a right roundhouse punch.

 

She acknowledged the point scored against her and we squared off once again. I thought: “I wonder if I can do that again – I’m sure that she wouldn’t expect it.”

 

So I feigned the same attach, she stepped left as before and I launched my roundhouse punch to her head confident that it would connect and irritate her.

 

Unfortunately, she was ready for me and blocked my punch with her left and used the same hand to counter with a straight punch to my chin.

 

It must have connected as the next thing I knew was that I was on my hand and knees. I must have lost consciousness for a fraction of a second as I had no memory of how I ended up there. I looked up and Helena was running around me like a headless chicken on the verge of tears and making this very strange wining noise while clutching her head with her gloved hands.

 

She calmed down when I assured her that I was OK and that I was not hurt. All she could say was: “Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry!” I told her not to worry and she said: “My god, I hardly touched you!”

 

This was definitely one of those occasions where Helena and I realised the potential power of what were doing.

Of course, I seized the opportunity and asked Helena if we were now quits for me damaging her nose.

 

The reply was an instant and uncompromising: “NO!”