The big road blocks in your karate training are all individual, yet they all seem to happen around the same time period for each student. I last wrote about the first challenges that crop up when a student receives their orange belt, you can read that here.
The next big road block happens around the time a student receives their purple belt. This coincides with a student at Kansai Karate entering the advanced class and ranks. After 2 years as an Adult, or closer to 4 years as a Junior there can be two challenges to how a student faces this challenge.
As a purple belt, entering the advanced class you have learnt a lot of karate, and students can feel like they know how to do karate. The repetition may even be boring. Check out the post on getting the most out of that repetition here. If you feel you have learnt everything, wait til you see what we do as a brown and black belt.
The more your learn the more you realise you don’t know.
However the jump a Purple belt is about to take is big, and this can be the other scary part of entering the advanced ranks. There is no upper limit on the advanced ranks, you can train with someone who has been doing karate a little bit longer than you, or someone who has been doing karate for years. This can be intimidating.
Advanced students – purple, brown and of course black belts, can be scary to train with at first, but you have to remember they have been in your shoes as well. The great thing about karate is that everyone gets there the same way. We all start at white belt and we all make the jump from an intermediate blue belt, to a purple belt. We know what its like.
The good news, the advanced students you train with all survived the transition. There are plenty that don’t, and you can find them in other places – school, the shops, parties, work places. The number of people I have met that use to do karate is amazing. Almost as many as the people that use to do karate and want to go back some day. They are great as well.
No the people you want to know, spend time with and learn from are right in the room with you, and you will find at Kansai Karate they are pretty great, friendly and very willing to help you get over your nerves, and learn the stuff that advanced students do.
The katas and sparring get harder, we talk about why and how we do what we do. The self defences gets more in depth, the physical training is more intense and the sense of accomplishment only gets greater over time.
In order to succeed you want to spend time with like minded people and learn from people that have already done it.
That’s what we call the advanced class.
