Back in the Gi.

by Ryan Gregory, February 9th, 2012

Well, here I am, a white belt. Again.  It’s been about 15 years since I last trained in the martial arts, and more than 17 years since I wore the white obi of a beginner.

I started training in karate as a first-year undergraduate at McMaster University along with a couple of friends. I had always been fascinated by the martial arts, but never actually went so far as to join a dojo until then. There was a club on campus, which made it pretty easy to give it a try.

If you are at all familiar with karate, you’ll know that there are various styles (ryu) that differ in their historical development and in the types of fighting techniques that they emphasize. The club at McMaster happened to be in the Japanese Goju-ryu style (more on this later).

Goju means “hard-soft”, which reflects the style’s emphasis on balancing “hard” techniques (such as powerful blocks and strikes) and “soft” techniques (for example, more circular movements and blocks typical of Chinese arts).  I didn’t know enough to appreciate the subtleties of the style — it was simply the one that was offered on campus. However, as I continued to train, I came to greatly value the philosophy and approach of the style.

I trained at McMaster for two semesters and managed to earn my yellow belt and then my orange belt in that time. Like most students, I went home in the summer; fortunately, there was a Goju-ryu dojo in my hometown and I started attending classes there under Sensei Clarence Stewart.

The dojo in Orillia practiced Goju-ryu, but in this case it was traditional Okinawan Goju-ryu rather than the Japanese version. There are significant differences between Okinawan and Japanese Goju-ryu. When I returned to McMaster after the summer, I intended to join the campus karate club again but soon realized that I did not want to go back to the Japanese style after having trained in the Okinawan style. So, rather than joining the McMaster club, I continued to train at home on weekends and holiday breaks, and trained intensively in the summers.

I earned my green belt in the Okinawan Goju-ryu dojo, then my blue belt, and finally my brown belt. I attended both the advanced classes and the junior belt classes, and I even helped with teaching the kids classes during the summer. I had also become Sensei Stewart’s uke — the guy who gets thrown around a lot in class and at demonstrations. I think it was partly because I’m fairly tall (6′) and my Sensei was able to throw me to great effect with his lower centre of gravity. In any case, it helped me to become proficient at breakfalls and to learn first hand which techniques worked really well (i.e., hurt the most).

By the time I was a brown belt, I was heading into my senior year at university and becoming more and more occupied with my studies, especially since I was starting to do independent research. In fact, my senior thesis became pretty all-consuming that year. I decided that I did not want to be a black belt unless I could continue to train seriously and to live up to the rank. So I made the decision to stop training and to focus on my studies and research.

That decision has worked out well. I earned my PhD from the University of Guelph in 2002 and worked as a postdoctoral fellow at the American Museum of Natural History in New York and the Natural History Museum in London, UK. I came back to Guelph in 2005 as an Assistant Professor, and was granted tenure and a promotion to Associate Professor in 2010.

Needless to say, teaching undergraduate courses, training graduate students, writing scientific papers and grant proposals, reviewing manuscripts, and serving on departmental committees is more than enough to fill up my time.  So why get back into karate? Why now?

I think deep down I always thought I might go back to it. Witness the fact that I kept my old gi and student manual and other gear the entire time. I have often felt like I missed it, but academic life is very demanding and I had a lot on my plate all the time. So what has changed? Well, I have tenure now, which takes some of the pressure off in terms of establishing one’s research program. The workload definitely is not lighter (actually, it’s heavier), but the pre-tenure years of a junior professor are quite intense.

I also know what I am doing now in both teaching and research — early on, there is a lot to learn and one has no prior resources upon which to call. (I literally got 2-3 hours of sleep per night for 2 months straight the first time I taught a course. This doesn’t happen anymore because now I have a large collection of teaching materials that I can use. I also know a lot more about how to design a new course than I did back then.) There is also the significant factor that I am now a husband and a father, and some of my priorities have shifted accordingly. Finally, as I get older it’s clear that I need to find some sort of physical activity that I won’t mind doing regularly — and I loathe exercise for its own sake because I find it mind-numbingly boring.

As it turns out, there is a well-established Okinawan Goju-ryu dojo in Guelph, led by Sensei Mark Matthews. I have now been training for a few weeks at the new dojo and already I can tell it’s a tight-knit club with a very high standard of training and a dedicated group of students at all ranks, including several skilled black belts who are quite generous with their time and knowledge. I can tell you that I am extremely rusty, I’m not nearly as flexible as I used to be, and I have forgotten some details of the kata that I used to perform regularly, but it’s starting to come back. There are some differences in the specific techniques and the kata in this particular branch of Goju-ryu, but I think I will be able to adjust pretty quickly since it’s been so long since I practiced the other versions regularly.

Given how long it has been since I last trained, I am starting over at white belt.  I look forward to working my way up through the ranks. Again.

This blog is just a place for me to write about my thoughts and experiences as I get back into the gi. (Not the same gi, mind you — I have gotten a fair bit, um, “taller” since I was in my 20’s). I also have an opportunity to reflect on the subtle differences that exist between different branches of Goju-ryu, which appeals nicely to my academic side.  Plus, I’ll be keeping notes as I go along anyway, so I might as well share them in case they are of use to other students.