Thursday, November 01, 2018

Of Gis, Equipment, and Retiring from the Martial Arts



I loved going to the dojo and went for nearly a decade 3- 5 times a week.  I stayed in shape, developed flexibility and strength, learned all sorts of new skills, got some nice belts, and made lots of friends.  All three of the kids participated to a greater or lesser degree. Two of them got black belts. Kate  then moved onto jitsui which she has trained for half a decade in: David got interested in boxing and trained for a year.

But about 5 years ago (around age 55), my combined hip and back problems took the fun out of it. After a few years of multiple back spasms and a very rapid decline in my ability to kick, I made a sad decision.  The straw that moved me was when  the doctors convinced me that I was going irreparable damage to my back (since I had one fused-up hip).

This week, the decision got revisited and punctuated.  My wife decided to redo parts of the house and we had to do some cleanup.  Sadly, so sadly, I was confronted with a few piles of old gis and equipment.  I stared at it in dismay. I sulked. I put on my gi for one last time and did a little shadow boxing with front kicks (I can’t do round houses or side kicks at all anymore).








Then I packed it all up and gave it away. Sad.  It was a really fun era for me.  I was lucky to have it.





So now it’s just swimming and biking. Ok, swimming and biking it iS!