Karate, Jedi Powers, and the 5 point finger death move!

One of the days I was in America I mentioned to someone that when I went back to England, I wanted to take up Mixed Martial Arts. Due to the awesomely nice nature of Americans and fate this resulted in me being offered a free Karate class.

When I got to the class, I watched a groups of kids varying between the ages of 4 -16 doing fun things. One of the exercises looked like a drunken guy trying to pull a girl at 4 am outside of some night club. Imagine the girl, sober, aware and a guy just about to pounce, (insert cool super duper karate move) the guy goes spinning and continues to fall flat on the ground. However the highlight of the watching part was witnessing a 10 year old girl lift a black belt - 15-16 stone, 6’1” - catapult him over her back and spinning over for him to hit the mat… hard! I later tried this on the same person and managed to do it ¼ times, with a little difficulty.

Once the kids were done it was my time. There was an orange belt, a black belt, and 4th Dan Master Sensei (who looked like Jet Li). To put into perspective how good he was, 5-6 years ago he beat the #1 Karate person in the whole of Japan, and we all know them peeps know their Karate!

Ryu = Japanese + Karate

It started off with each of us beating on parts of our bodies, in order to strengthen them, hitting bottles of sand, hitting shins, kicking each others stomach, etc. It just felt like pain and hitting inanimate objects, this just hurt and was boring, and isn’t why I came to the class. I could do this at home, although in fairness I wouldn’t as I love my home and would not want to hurt it.



We did some training, of which the coolest part was knife training. The Sensai informed me that because I lived in London this would be more useful than me learning the Neo-Matrix dodging bullets move. I concurred - who was going to shoot me in the UK?!  Stabbings however… I can think of a few people…



Once the class was over we played some knife games; first one to hit the other party got a point. I called this ‘No-holds-barred-PG-13-knife-fun’ (Awaiting TM). I first played/sparred with the orange belt and beat her 5-2. Then came the black belt and for a while we were tied at 4-4. He finally beat me but with a massively dubious point which I am sure I should have won. Anyhow, now for the Jet Li looking, grandmaster wizard, Matrix-esque, kicking Japanese no1 ass, karate 4th Dan black belt. This guy owned me! He seemed to just move sooo fast  - my reactions were like a child’s compared to him. The only time I got anywhere near him is when he came at me, but before I even realised he had, I went for him and got a lucky hit. He beat me 5-1.

End of the class and in the ever-nice American way I had gotten used to, I was offered a ‘Gi’: a karate outfit of my own if I was ever to train when back in the UK. On the drive home the Sensei explained how he had learnt a move that could penetrate armour, and the pain would be felt internally but maybe not so much externally. I thought maybe he was chatting rubbish but then he told me his favourite movie was Star Wars, and considering he had been studying martial arts since he was 5, I was not going to put it past him. I moved the conversation on to what I wanted to really learn but unfortunately it was unethical to teach me the 5 finger death move from Kill Bill. He asked me why I wanted to learn it and I said,  “Self Amusement.” Maybe I could do 4 of them and then scare my friends with my little pinky finger... He laughed, I repeatedly asked numerous times. He looked deep into my soul and did some crazy Jedi mind trick and I agreed self amusement was not a reason to learn the 5 point death finger move.

Written by: Haveyoumetabs
Editor: Zaira Shaal.