Melody Writes

Return to Karate Today I took my first real karate class in months. During Covid my training had become sporadic (at best). We had some scattered zoom classes, I practiced at home as best I could and inbetween lockdowns we did distanced classes. Our classes are still distanced, but it's still nice to be finally training again. Mostly I did review and marvelled again at how much better my body is at remembering than my brain. Anyone who has trained martial arts for a time (or anything similar) is probably familiar with this concept. I call it "muscle memory". I am sure there are other terms out there. Our style of karate is kata-heavy (kata=patterns). And while I did make some minor mistakes, I was able to work through several kata without really thinking through the steps that much. This is because when I've done them enough times, it's like my body remembers for me. It knows the next step intuitively and will perform it even if I can't fully visualize it. And...

Good afternoon everyone! Personal News: Been a little absent lately. Things have been chaotic in my personal life. Nothing bad - just that we moved and had to unpack. I also changed jobs. I now work full time as a legal assistant again. It's going well, but it's a bit of an adjustment. My worklife has been a bit "flexible" we'll say the last couple of years and I'm happy to have a steady job again. I'm also returning to Karate this week. With my new job, I can potentially afford to start a second martial art.  I'm starting a trial of Kung Fu at the end of September. I've never done Kung Fu and always wanted to try. I'll be blogging a bit about my return to training properly after coronavirus and what I think about Kung Fu - so watch for that. Blog News: I'm going to be getting back on a regular posting schedule now. I will be posting *something* a minimum of once a week. The posts will go up on weekends - sometimes Saturday (like today) but...

I plan to start including posts about martial arts and thought I should share a brief outline of my training history. Photo by Jason Briscoe on Unsplash I began my martial arts journey at university when I started my undergrad years ago. I hadn’t been interested in training before but I learned about the fencing team and thought that learning how to sword fight would be “cool”. Fencing was fun, but it wasn’t quite what I wanted. I trained for about a year, participated in a couple tournaments, but overall, felt that something wasn’t working for me. I also had trouble fitting in with the team. One day my friend suggested I join her for Taekwondo. Immediately, I fell in love with the martial art. There were always new moves and tricks to try. I didn’t have to spend as much money for equipment and the team was a better fit for me. I embraced Taekwondo wholeheartedly for many years. I eventually earned my red/black stripe belt, but left for graduate school before I could earn m...