It has been a rough patch since that Ashi-Barai put a very
abrupt pause on Karate last April. Surgery, the brace, months of watching from
the sidelines. I needed something to look forward to. Turns out a grading
date works just as well as a countdown timer, and this year finally gave me a
few good ones to circle on the calendar.
Shodan
On May 31st, I passed my Shito-Ryu black belt exam. Back in October I was
only tentatively floating the idea of grading up as
“something to look forward to as part of the recovery process”. It is a
strange feeling to actually write that it happened.
My last physio test in December already had both quads coming back into
balance, close enough that the therapist stopped hedging when he said it.
I still feel the hardware in there. The wire mesh and whatever else they
anchored the tendon back on with does not let you forget it is there, but
I am finally at the point where getting back into serious Kata practice is
on the radar instead of just a hope. Small thing to most people, a fairly
big one to me.
That physio session photo of the aftermath of a first serious plyo-physio session
is a decent snapshot of what rehab looks like now.
Raw lifting numbers do not matter much at this point. What matters is getting
fast-twitch fire back into that leg through plyometrics: box jumps,
bounding, cone drills, all aimed at teaching the leg to fire quickly again
instead of just strongly.
Deep squats are still off the table for now. The knee is not cooperating yet,
and I am working on it. Flexibility on that side has
quietly slipped too, probably from months of unconsciously guarding the
knee without realizing it. Both are on the list before Kata gets any more
ambitious.
Zen Karate in Kamakura
On the last Japan trip, I got to attend a Zen Karate session in Kamakura, training alongside Emiri Iwamoto. I am never
going to be in her league, that was obvious about thirty seconds in, but
training next to someone that good is exactly the kind of thing that resets
your idea of what to aim for.
For reference this is the level Zen Karate trains you alongside:
We worked Rohai, Seiunchin, and Bassai Dai. There is a video recording from
that session; I am not posting it here, because watching it back was
humbling. My movement is still rough in all three. I will
be working diligently with JMAC in
Waterloo, and with Sensei Annie in particular to clean these three up properly rather than let them stay at
“good enough to not embarrass myself.”
University of Waterloo Karate Club
Somewhere in the middle of all this, I also made it out to a beach party
with the University of Waterloo Karate Club. Being part of a community like
that is its own kind of light at the end of the tunnel. A room full of
people who are, without exception, athletes, and genuinely inspiring to be
around, even though I have got a solid ten to twenty years on most of them.
Injuries are a lot easier to come back from when you have got people like
that to come back to.
The club has been running since the 2000s, and with how much turnover a
university club naturally has, I am starting to realize I am turning into
something like its unofficial chronicler at this point, one of the few
people who has been around long enough to remember more than one generation
of it.
What is next
Kids are progressing well in Shito-Ryu, which is its own kind of motivation
to keep showing up. For me, the plan for the rest of the year is straightforward:
clean up kata properly, and put Shito-Ryu Nidan and Goju-Ryu Nidan
on the radar for next year.
Published: 2026-08-12
Updated : 2026-08-12
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