Places I Grew Up: Karate Dojo

I grew up east of Albuquerque, NM, on the other side of the Sandia mountains, between Tijeras and Edgewood. When I was very young we lived in the city, but about the time my brother Matthew was born we moved up the canyon to about 2000 ft higher elevation than ABQ itself (about 5000 ft), which can make a difference with some recipes. 😄

I was homeschooled up through high school. I'm told that we started with my older brother Andrew, who had some difficulties in early education. Since Mom was a teacher she suggested that she could teach us instead. When Andrew did better and I was doing ok too, we decided to continue. There were times when Mom would say the rest of us never set foot inside a real school.

How we were educated changed over time. Early on we would meet with nearby families and a co-op. Later we would almost "car-school," driving from teacher to teacher. That was a lot of work! So after that we had a phase where we were almost entirely schooled at home, although church was another resource; this thread was always present in our education, but for a time we focused on it primarily. And then we were introduced to public education through community colleges. (When we moved to VA when I was in high school, we had some opportunities that were like co-ops and car-schooling.)

When we were car-schooling in NM, one of the activities for us three boys was karate. If we were out shopping and in our ghis (uniforms), Mom would sometimes observe that we looked like bodyguards around our sister Haley. There was a dojo in Cedar Crest, which was at this plaza when we started as white belts. (We moved locations, so it's another place now.) Seems like we upgraded our fireplace to a pellet stove through a place right next door, but that's no longer there either.

Sessions usually consisted of:

1. Bowing in (if you were late you may have needed to wait a bit for a senior member to recognize you, motivation to be on time)
2. Stretches/warm-ups
3. Techniques: the whole class would line up by rank and go back and forth the exercise space practicing one technique at a time. (For example, forward leaning stance was a lot like lunges.) We would breathe out on completion of each move, and kiai (pronounced key-eye, shout) when we reached the opposite end of the room.
4. Forms: Sequences of techniques that the whole class would perform in columns. We'd start with the forms everyone knew, bowing out when we'd exhausted our knowledge to either learn more forms from the instructor or a student with a higher belt level, or to watch stoically from the sidelines as more senior members performed higher-level forms.
5. Sparring: Usually best in one-on-one fights to 3 points. A point was gloved punches that landed on torso, maybe a penalty for blows that hit the (helmeted) head. Strangely, since I've had an interest in boxing, I wasn't as hyped up to do this as I thought I would be. 
6. Fun time: Usually aerobics like somersaults or punching, kicking, or leapfrogging over a punching bag. Our instructor, Shane, sometimes used a padded stick to indicate sequences of jumps and rolls for us to perform.
7. Recitation: Shane was careful to remind us always through echo-and-response with students enthusiastically shouting "Yes sirs" and "No sirs" that
1. Practice is important, but "perfect practice makes perfect"
2. The skills we were learning were last resort, for self-defense only, and never to harm
8. Bowing out (more senior members last, if I remember correctly)

Shane was a great teacher and role model. He could be funny: Sometimes when stretching we would sit Indian style with the soles of both feet touching, and we would stretch our backs by leaning forward, at which point Shane would ask us to breathe in deeply through our nose... and therefore smell our stinky feet. And he could be serious: There were times when horseplay and messing around were simply not allowed. 

Shane also pushed students out of their comfort zone. He coaxed one young student into learning how to say "yellow" correctly before earning the belt. For my part, I had always been a little on the lazy side with physical activity because of asthma, but he made sure I got my exercise in! But he also made sure we didn't push too hard.Seems like his father also taught karate. Shane had a ponytail and goatee, a look I've tried once or twice. (Edit: Thought he might have also given students mementos from out-of-area competitions, but not sure.)

We shared the building on Wednesday nights and Saturday mornings with a Jazzercise group led by a lady named Judy. The leftmost part of the facility was for guests like parents to watch or wait to pick up the students. The gap to the left of the building in the picture had a staircase that I went down very infrequently if at all. One time a student tried sliding down the staircase's banister and got their leg stuck between it and the wall! The senior members had to help ease them out.

When we moved locations to further up the crest, we were in another plaza near a BBQ place called RIBS; Mom, Dad, and Haley (who did ballet/dance lessons instead of martial arts) would sometimes grab a bite there while they waited for us. We may have been a complex or two down from RIBS. (Seems the far left end had an aquarium, where we got betta fish.) The new building had a mirror at one end of the room so we could watch and correct our posture. The waiting area was separated from the exercise area by a windowed wall so parents could talk without breaking the class's focus.

Highest level I remember getting was brown belt. Earning a black belt was strenuous: You had to go through several kyus (represented by black tape wrapped around end of belt) with several levels to get it. Some of the black belts had red tape at the ends. Didn't learn all the ins and outs of the belt system -- some of my certificates have JG for Junior Grade (I think) but I don't know what that means -- I just knew that if you wanted to pass when testing day rolled around you gave 101%! I failed tests when I didn't do that. You had to sweat!

We also trained for competitions. There was sparring, but I don't remember doing it. I remember you walked crisply in front of judges, announced yourself and your form, and then performed it like testing day.

Martial arts has been a good influence with a positive impact on me. At NMT I took classes in Kung Fu with other strong role models. In the future I may look for ways to get involved in it again.