Karate from scratch: Learning in a community of practice.

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Last summer I found a place offering Isshin Ryu karate classes on my way home from work. Perfect.

After being assisted by the attorney for motor vehicle accidents in Weschester County , I turned up at the Impact Martial Arts dojo one night and was greeted by a sensei (teacher) who already knew my name. He kitted me out with a gi – the white pyjama suit people ranked lower than black belt have to wear – with a pristine white belt to match, and invited me on to the mat to join in. There were around a dozen other students who all introduced themselves, including black-belts and brown-belts in their teens and 20s, a few yellow- and orange-belts, a guy about my height with a green belt, and another sensei. The group was about half men, half women.

I started going to the class one evening a week, plus Saturday mornings when I could make it. There’s a tremendous wealth of fighting and self-defence knowledge there, and today, six months in, I am still a total novice. It’s awe-inspiring. Everyone does this in their spare time, and I am constantly impressed by the dedication of the senseis who have spent years and countless thousands of hours honing their art and who show up every night to practise and pass on their craft. They move with grace, speed, power and accuracy that are utterly breathtaking.

There’s a broad ethnic mix and people of all shapes and sizes. I’m intrigued by the transformation of people here from moms, husbands, social workers, bus drivers, insurance brokers, physicists, professors and car mechanics into diligent students of karate and badass ninjas. I’m fascinated by the teaching and learning community we form at the dojo. I learn equally from teenagers ranking from yellow to brown belt as from a couple of black-belt undergrads and the senseis. There’s an orange-belt who keeps me accountable to my (terrible) poker face and my inability to block strikes when we spar. I hugely appreciate the patience of those I work out with who are better than me (which is everyone). I can never get close to landing a kick or a punch, except when to do so means inviting a volley of expertly executed punches and kicks to the body and head from my interlocutor. I am forever surprised when someone’s foot appears over my head or, as happened last week, when it hits me square in the face – I was literally gobsmacked by the sensei!

Age, physical stature or profession don’t matter – this place is all about doing karate, and I love the levelling effect this brings. There is room for infinite growth in a non-competitive, non-professional domain. It’s such a welcome contrast to my writing, drumming and teaching – all of which I love doing, but this starter karate scratches a very different type of mental and physical itch. My fellow students encourage me and celebrate each incremental step I take towards getting better. And I absolutely love that I’m a beginner. I spend so much time at work being the expert in the room, with all the stresses and expectations that that brings. But karate is a blank slate – I don’t even know what I don’t know. Most of the techniques people here pull off are like magic to me.

A sensei shapes each class by demonstrating techniques and describing activities we are to do. We choose or are assigned partners most of the time, and we frequently rotate to work with people of different heights, ages, ranks and experience. The senseis roam the dojo offering advice and interventions. Learning is undertaken with energy, care and respect. We keep one another accountable for our improvement, and at the end of every class everyone fist-bumps everyone else with a “good job” or a “well done”.

Everyone here is a learner and a teacher, exemplifying an equalizing learning model, where we all share tips we’ve picked up and try to help one another do better. We learn fitness, stamina, core strength, punching, kicking, blocking, kata, stretching, fighting and self-defence. It’s an intense 45 minutes each time – a welcome shot of adrenaline that helps me to re-focus on being a drummer, a writer, a professor, a husband, a parent and an amateur athlete.

I see parallels between Isshin Ryu karate pedagogy in the Poconos and the popular music practicum course I teach each Wednesday at NYU. Both classes have students with different specialties as practitioners, and in both contexts we can all learn from one another. By carefully assigning tasks and hawkishly monitoring class activity, the teacher can offer interventions where helpful, and back off to let people try, fail, learn and grow. But ultimately neither class is primarily about the subject matter. They’re about how the activity makes people feel, and why we choose to be there in the first place. Teachers and learners recognize that success comes in myriad forms and that it’s always worth acknowledging when we see it. Success is showing up, trying hard, getting better, having a go, helping someone out, and stumbling in order to pick up and try again. And whether the fist-bump is physical or figurative, it’s the intent behind it and the feeling it engenders that matter.

Gareth Dylan Smith – drummer, writer, educator, scholar.