My Thoughts on Perseverance and Martial Arts

[Kenny Richards]

Perseverance

           noun: steadfastness in doing something despite difficulty or delay in achieving success...

If the most important thing in martial arts is respect, the second must be perseverance. As I sit here in my big arm chair with my knee propped up with an ice pack on it, I am reminded again that the road to a black belt is often long and filled with many obstacles. I wanted to share some of my experiences to date, to help others when they face their own hurdles.

My first real challenge started on day one, in my very first class. The first time you attend a class, there is this overwhelming feeling of confusion that comes over you. You realize that you have no idea what is happening around you. Everybody is yelling in a Korean and randomly just yelling in general. (It is important to Ki Hup with spirit!) The whole experience can be jarring, but it is important to remember that everybody in the room has been in the exact same position as you. Because we have all been there, we are also all very happy to help.

While everybody has to work through the ‘confusion’ phase, I had another issue to deal with when starting. Being of the ‘over 40’ crowd and having settled into a couch potato like phase for some time, I found the classes ‘challenging’. In the beginning I needed at least one day and sometimes two days to recover before taking another class. Yes, being old sucked and I was reminded of this fact over and over again. While it took me months of coming back every week, I eventually worked up to being able to take more than a couple classes a week. Reaching the goal of taking every adult class in one week was significant for me.

If this were a fairy tale, now would be the point where the prince has to face his big challenge. For me the big challenge started one evening in February 2012. While trying very hard to-do a roundhouse kick, I felt a sudden and very painful ouch in my left knee as I fell to the floor. Over the next couple days I found out that I’d torn the ACL and meniscus in my left knee. I was looking at surgery and nine months of recovery. At this point, I could have decided to walk away from TKD. I don’t think anybody would have given me a hard time about it. But I really enjoyed my hour of kicking every day and didn’t want to give it up! I also knew several people who had gone through the exact same thing and were back out on the mat kicking.

At work I would call this a “solved problem”, meaning coming back after tearing an ACL was something that had been done.  My plan from the beginning was to treat my physical therapy like TKD. I actually started PT before my surgery and went back immediately after the surgery. If the Physical Therapist said to-do 20 reps of something, I would do 40. I started bugging my surgeon to go back to TKD after about three months, he actually let me at the fourth month. In the beginning I couldn’t kick, so I had to make to with punching things. Eventually I could kick with my ‘repaired knee’, but I wasn’t allowed to plant with it until a full nine months post surgery.

By the time the ninth month rolled around, I had worked back up to going to class just about every day. Once I was able to start kicking with both legs again, I started the process of re-learning things and setting goals for myself. The first time I dropped wearing the knee brace or when I started adding jumps to my kicks were big milestones. At some point I just stopped thinking about the knee problems all together.

But the end of this story hasn’t been written yet, as I mentioned in the beginning I’m now recovering from my second knee surgery. This time it was only a torn meniscus, so a shorter surgery and quicker recovery time. I actually found this situation harder than the first knee injury, I’d come so far and wasn’t ready to slide backwards again. But this is part of the process, everybody has their own challenges to overcome and mine just happens to include a bad knee. I came across a video recently which really put things into perspective.

 

“Do or do not. There is no try.”

             - Master Yoda

( photo of Kenny Richards Breaking the board by KSN Victoria Harris)

[Kenny Richards]

Thank you for the kind words and please post the picture....

[MeLisa Turcott Strongheart]

What a great, inspiring, and helpful blog post Kenny.   Thank you for sharing it.   

would you mind if I posted a picture of you that ksn Harris took in your blog post?