In Karate Pain is Not Necessarily Bad!
Karate pain might be good, and it might be bad. It depends on the circumstances.
I know, we’ve all heard the saying, ‘No pain, no gain,’ but that isn’t what this is all about.
In Karate Pain can be an instruction
You see, there are two types of Karate Pains.
One type of Karate Pain is the real injury. The broken bone, the accidental punch in the nose or poke in the eyes. These injuries, these types of Karate pain are real and should be attended to.
If you’re bleeding, stop the durned bleeding. If you’re nose is broken, see a doctor. A poke in the eye could result in all manner of eye problems.
So you take care of it.
The thing here is to be able to tell the difference between karate pain that is real, and karate pain that is in the mind.
A bruise isn’t usually serious. So just inspect it, take care of it if you have to, and move on.
A dislocated joint, better get that sucker looked at.
A bone bruise…hmmm.
Bone bruises, especially when they are the result of some fast and intense sparring, can be quite painful.
I remember a blocking exercise which kept me in bone bruises for years.
I remember overextending punches, and suffering bone bruises inside the elbow joint where the bones slapped together. That was painful for a long time.
But, bruises, even bone bruises, are just something you go through.
The karate blocking exercise I spoke of, it was called the eight step blocking exercise, and we did it every class, and we all had constant bruising of the forearms.
BUT, after a couple of years of this we would be doing freestyle, do a block, and our opponents would yelp in pain. Simply, we got used to the pain, started ignoring it, and got the abilities that we wouldn’t have gotten if we hadn’t persisted in our karate classes.
And there were other exercises, some quite painful, that gave us abilities that people who don’t take karate, or other martial arts like kung fu or taekwondo, would never get.
The ability to grip somebody with a hand and bring them to their knees simply by squeezing.
The ability to get calm and focused when terrible things are happening and everybody else is going into a state of panic.
There is a saying, you don’t make an omelet without breaking eggs. Man, is this true.
For seven years I broke eggs. I still have bumps on the bones in my forearms from the durned eight step blocking exercise.
But when it comes to getting things done, I’m the go to guy.
Simply, I have faced pain, and now no the difference between real pain, and fake pain, the kind of pain one should just ignore and go ahead with his work.
This is something that is not taught in school.
And, truth, this is something that makes people great.
Pioneers of America had this quality. There was nobody there when they broke a wagon or got shot with an arrow or whatever, and so they had to fix everything themselves.
In recent times this ability, to forge ahead when the going gets tough, has been weaned out of people. But the martial arts, especially exercises that result in the karate pain i describe here, bring this ability out again.
Here’s a great article on the toughest Martial Arts class I ever taught. And if you are seriously interested in finding out more about this Karate pain type of thing, and how it can help you, check out the Evolution of an Art course at Monster Martial Arts.
