White Belt Story

[nzproud]

Osu. Since we have a thread about 'black belt story', we should share our experience when we were white belts.

As a white belt in Japan, I didn't know much about fighting nor karate. I just wanted to learn the style Andy Hug was disciplined in. At the time I thought was Seido Kaikan as K-1 was big. Anyway luckily there was a kyokushin dojo nearby my house(2 stations away) and there was a Japan light heavyweight champion as an instructor. Ah! I must explain that my first ever session was in Tokyo(an hour away on train) under Sensei Aoki(also a Japanese champion). I bought a dogi on the same day.. I was thinking wow these guys look strong.. wow flexible.. even orange belts looked strong! well the session was for general adults and there was another fighting session after the normal class. I stayed in but just watched they kumite very hard. On the day I made a friend(who was just a yellow belt) he was in the center of the figheters and he kumite'd everyone constantly.. that was After that there was another kumite session, he got dropped by a 14 year old blackbelt kid who instructed me basics on the same night and how to kick high.. I can't keep my leg high like you okay mmm.... a 14 year old kid kicked the guy's face with jodan mawashigeri! and my friend was on the matt.. wow.

Between the sessions, there was a brown belt girl(Hitomi Fukui, Runner-up in a Womens Tournament?).. She partnered up with my friend and she let my friend punch to her gut! Geeze.. what sort of place this is!



well this was like my first day experience lol.

Anyway I never went back to the dojo that was in the same branch. It was too hard for me to start with. But I trained in Japan for just a month and headed back to New Zealand to start training again.

[koji112091]

Realy interesting.

You make me jelious.
LOL

[kyokushin4life]

Sticky'd.

[divanatrix]

Great thread!!! It is refreshing and inspirational to hear the white belt stories of other community members! I can't wait to read more!

[Lanky Sempai]

Originally Posted by nzproud

Ah! I must explain that my first ever session was in Tokyo(an hour away on train) under Sensei Aoki(also a Japanese champion)..

Tha was probably a monday night session! Aoki Shihan still runs an Obi Ken class on mondays, Troy goes and Musashi and I are thinking about asking to go. Its a late session though, finishes at 12am!
Funny, I read this post ages ago and now I've actually met the guys your talking about!!!

[Kyokugen]

Wow seriously you are lucky you met a lot strong people,it is really make me jealous

[seienchin]

My first class was INSANE. I didn't know it, but the instructor was in training for the world tournament...so we were all training WITH him. I can't remember much of the class, but I do remember, in my very first karate class, doing countdowns from 50 in increments of 5 of pushups, situps and squats.

the next morning when I tried to get out of bed, my brain sent a message to my body "OK, time to sit up...", but my abs simply would not contract...just would not.

I had to roll over and slither off the bed. UNforgettable.

I went back. and back...and back.

[vapor]

Kidachi Sempai was the first to instruct me in my very first class
(he is in the world tourney this year)

So, even with all of the other instructors in the dojo, I feel a special connection with Kidachi Sempai, as he was the one who taught me to say OSU!

vapor

[JoeSaunders]

Osu

Hopefully no one minds me posting in this long forgotten topic. I figure it's stickeyed anyway so I'm not bringing it back to the top.

My journey to Kyokushin has taken me 18 years.

I started taekwondo with my brothers at age 4. I was much younger (13 and 15 years) than my brothers, and by the time I started they were both national champions. Therefore, I grew up on a steady diet of Bruce Lee movies and high kicks. Unfortunately, I was never an athletic kid like my brothers and wasn't really all that great at TKD. I stuck with it on and off for a few years until I was 10, but don't really remember anything I learnt. Around this time I briefly did some non-descript karate, but being 11 years old, my dedication wasn't really great. For the next few years I dabbled between football, boxing and whatever else my friends were doing.

When I was 15, my training took a turn for the serious. I was at my local gym in the weights room and walked out to see these guys throwing each other around on mats. I asked them what they were doing and they said they were a new wrestling team. Having just seen UFC fighting for the first time not long before, the idea of becoming a wrestler like Mark Coleman was really appealing. I started wrestling and had my first exposure to "mental breakdown training." The coach was a former assistant coach of the USSR Olympic team, had been involved in five Olympic games and had helped with the coaching of Aleksandr Karelin. I was the only child in the club. Everyone else was late 20's or early 30's. I was trained to the same level as the adults and pretty much tortured for the first 6 weeks to see if I'd quit. I managed to stick it out and learned a hell of a lot about toughness from being around those guys. A number of the guys I wrestled with there (Dan Higgins, Kyle Noke, Adrian Pang, Tony Green) would go on to form Integrated Martial Arts - Australia's premier MMA team.

I kept wrestling until Christmas break. Yuri, our coach, was going back to Russia to see family and so we took a break for 6 weeks. During this time, Judo was still running at the club. I had heard Judo was good cross training for wrestlers, so I went to check it out. I instantly fell in love with ground fighting, armbars and submissions and decided that I wanted to compete in Judo. I had my first judo tournament after just 6 weeks of training... 3 weeks before I was scheduled to compete in our national wrestling championships. In my second match I fell awkwardly and completely destroyed my knee - tearing my ACL and MCL, dislodging my patella and fracturing 4 bones.

I had surgery and was out of action for a year. Timing was probably good for this, because I was in my senior year of school. During the year off, I read as much as I could about Judo, and with my already passionate interest in Japanese culture, I fell more and more in love with the art. By the time I was healthy, I didn't have much interest in returning to wrestling. Yuri had since moved on and while the new coach was good, I only made the occasional appearance there. Judo became my focus.

In my second year back from injury, I had a great run in competition. I won a senior state title, junior national title, national university title, two state international open titles and got to represent Australia. I was on top of the world. After that year (2005) I decided to leave university and get a job. Unfortunately this put a serious cramp in my training style and I stopped competing at a high level.

Since then I've trained and competed in everything from Wing Chun to BJJ, whilst trying to keep up regular appearances at my judo clubs. However, one art I'd always wanted to try was Kyokushin Karate. Circumstance always seemed to get in the way of me starting up Kyokushin. I'd wanted to do it since around the time I started wrestling, but it just never seemed like it would materialise.

About 2 months ago I did a google search for Kyokushin, trying to find the Brisbane city club that I had thought about joining years prior to see if maybe their training times had changed to make it more plausible for me. However, what I found instead was a brand new dojo opening 20 minutes from my house which had training times suited perfectly to my new work schedule. I went in to check it out and found out it was being run by Sempai Jason Crimmin (a current world-level middleweight fighter) under the guidance of Shihan Trevor Fields, whom I'd known by reputation alone for a number of years.

The training was intense, reminding me of my wrestling days. I've been there 6 weeks now and I'm loving it. I'm not quite as coordinated as I'd hoped, and the movements (particularly kihon) aren't coming to me quite as naturally as I thought maybe they should, but I'm fighting off the frustration with the knowledge that I'm taking the first steps on a truly worthwhile journey. Sempai Jason is a great inspiration and the rest of the class, while all white belts, are awesome also.

At the moment I'm training Kyokushin three times per week and Judo twice a week. It's a hard training schedule, but I feel that doing two hard style arts concurrently makes you a better fighter just by virtue of dragging yourself to training each night.

So that's my story of how I got to the start of this journey. I look forward 5-8years time when I can continue the story in the Black Belt Journey thread!

[supergroup7]

Thank you for your stories everyone. I truly appreciated reading them.

I remember how I had already been training in Shotokan karate. My Shotokan Sensei had closed down one of his dojo ( he was teaching at two of them). I had been attending both dojos in the same night.. just like my Sensei. I would train at the first dojo, and help with the new students, and then I would travel with my husband to the second dojo and train in the classes there. When my Shotokan Sensei closed one of the dojo down, I asked his permission to look into training at a nearby Kyokushin dojo to keep up my physical improvement. I was afraid that dropping the training hours to half the amount of time would affect my weight loss negatively.

My Shotokan Sensei asked me "Do you know what Kyokushin Karate means, and what these people do?"

I shook my head as I didn't have a clue. To me karate was karate. I assured my Shotokan Sensei that the Kyokushin Sensei was a wonderful man in whom I trusted very much. On that basis alone, I received permission to train in two dojo, and two styles of Karate at the same time on the condition that I managed to keep the two styles separate in my head.

The funniest thing for me was how confused I was to see yellow belts sitting up near the higher part of the line. In Shotokan, yellow belts are only 8th kyu not 6th kyu as in Kyokushin. I had NO idea what level the blue belts were because blue isn't a belt color in the style of Shotokan that I trained. OH.. and the bowing is SO different. Shotokan is in Musubi Dachi. I must have caught myself going into Musubi Dachi a hundred times a class at first. I know that it must have looked pretty strange to see me constantly adjusting my hands, and feet.

[Dent]

Osu!

Great stories, please keep them coming!

Osu!

[MilkManX]

I have had previous Martial Art Experience in Judo and Shinkendo but I always wanted to learn Karate.

My brother calls me one day and says that his Father in Law is teaching Kyokushin at the local church.

I go and check it out. I start training there on Saturdays this past November 07, just going through the motions.

Then I find K4L. This site changed me. I got hooked. I was going my 1 class but practicing at home. Working out and just getting into way better shape. The addiction continued when I found an Enshin dojo very near my house!

I went to check the Enshin class out.

It was there that I met a Sensei who I really clicked with and the training is hard but fun and practical.

I have since switched to Enshin and still am on my quest for a better me. I have my first belt test at the end of August 2008.

[smoothsake]

My first experience doing Kyokushin was during Fighter's Class. I didn't even have a gi but was given the OK by Senpai Seiji to give it a go. Fighter's Class involved a lot of bag work, conditioning and sparring. I don't remember doing any sparring, but I definitely did all the bag work and conditioning.

I was impressed how nobody looked tired.

I was impressed how nobody complained.

Rotation after rotation, everyone just yelled Osu and did their combinations. I remember at the end we were doing conditioning with partners. I was partnered up with an orange belt. He was an older guy that still comes into the dojo once in awhile (he's still an orange belt!) and we were told to do two punches to the chest 1-2, and then two shita tsukis to the gut 3-4... bare knuckle. He barely hit me cause this was my first day but I thought what the hell, I'm going to hit this guy.

He kept telling me, "hit me harder!" I was thinking... is this guy for real? So I really gave it to him, maybe 80-90%, and he just smiled and looked like it was the best feeling. I seriously thought he was into S&M.

Anyways, I was hooked.

[Chuck]

my first class was two weeks ago and i got round house kicked in the head by a little japanese kid with a green belt during kumite love i loved the press-ups and the intensty and the straight up physicality of it all so keep going back i still havent even go myself a gi yet hah

[GreatApe]

Some great stories!

I've only been training for about six months, but am loving--as others have said--the intensity and pace of the training.

I was Googling places to train earlier in the year because I'd done both Shorinji Kempo and a koryu, Shinto Muso Ryu Jodo before my daughter was born in 2006, and I really wanted to get back into the martial arts. Something close to me was a plus! It turned out that there was a kyokushin dojo just down the road, and it had been there all the time, which sure beat travelling an hour away to the other side of the city to train.

What a surprise I was in for!

Jodo, being a weapons-based art, was relatively sedate. There was only a light cutting warmup, and while there was lots of big muscle movements in holding your jo or bokken aloft, it never really got serious in the cardio stakes. Shorinji Kempo was higher on this scale, but even then its mix of punching and kicking, goho, and throws and pins, juho, meant that there were breaks and rest periods, and the pressure wasn't constant.

Kyokushin karate was a whole different kettle of fish.

It turned out that the first class that I went to was particularly super intense because it was a grading. I couldn't believe the pace, and the strength, athleticism and grace of the instructors. I really, really wanted to be like the sempai that was taking the class: to kick as high, to move with such fluidity, and to continue with such unreserved energy.

And I'm still coming! Training twice a week (that's all the dojo offers), and coming up for my first tournament and grading soon.

[vapor]

GreatApe,

Wonderful first post!

Could I ask that you jump over to the INTRODUCTIONS forum, and tell us a bit about yourself, so that we can give you a proper welcome, and OSU~!?

vapor

[Dent]

Osu!

Nice post, GreatApe! Heck of a time to take a class though!

Osu!

[nova]

I used to do ju-jitsu, the ju-jitsuclub and the karateclub are "friends" with each other. the ju-jitsu sensei also does kyokushin, and a sempai from kyokushin also does ju-jitsu. sometimes the ju-jitsusensei is going to give a ju-jitsu lesson to the karate, and also the karatesempai to the ju-jitsu, that way I got introduced with karate. It was a very simple lesson, but I liked it.

So one evening instead of going home after ju-jitsu, I stayed and trained with the karate. It was a very technical lesson, but I liked it a lot, so I came back, then it was a more intense lesson, and also that I liked. So I stayed comming back.

The nice thing is also that our ju-jitsuclub and karateclub at the end of the season, give a training and a bbq and a party together. for members of the club, and for parents and friends. It is always nice to introduce the two sports this way and to get to know each other (it certainly for me helped to start karate, because I allready knew some people at the karateclub, and back then I used to be very shy, so starting to train in a complete new group of people was a bit scary for me)