Alasdair Stuart's Blog

I’m a yellow belt. That means on the most basic level that I know how to do five throws (Osoto Otoshi, Deashi Barai, Uki Goshi, Uchi Mata and Tai Otoshi and note I said know how to do them not how to spell them) and five hold downs (Kesa Gatame, Broken Scarf Hold, Chest Hold…the other one and side hold). I know how to escape from hold downs three different ways (Not even going to try with those) and I spend about twenty minutes a week fighting. Six weeks ago I would have said I spent twenty minutes a weak getting beaten up but that’s got a little bit better. Not much, but a little.

I’m a yellow belt. I’m fitter, I’m stronger, I’m smarter than I was. I don’t get terrified when I fight anymore, just lightly scared. I’ve bled, out on the mat, which is a ridiculous Hemingwayian chest-beating piece of machismo but it’s one I’m oddly proud of. I’ve been hurt in a fight and kept going, not won, but held my own.

I’m a yellow belt. I’m one of them now, no longer a rookie, no longer a tourist. I’m on the path, the same as everyone else, a fellow traveller learning the ways the human body moves, its tolerances, what it can stand, what it can’t abide, where my limits are and how to push them. I’m not perfect but I’m not meant to be, I’m meant to be learning, meant to be improving. I’m standing on yellow ground where I used to be standing on white. I’m on the path. I’m getting there. I’m a yellow belt.

Except I’m actually a red belt.

I was a couple of minutes late to class this week, and when I got there they were just starting warm up. I had my glasses off before I really noticed anything and halfway through warm up, Steve came over to me and I realised that his belt was visible. Now the thing is, for anything to be visible to me is quite an achievement with my glasses off but his belt was visible. It was also red. He explained that apparently the club used the red belt rank as well, which is discretionary, and whilst we had definitely graded, we had graded to red belt. As was pointed out to me later, this was probably why the base of the certificate I got saying I’m now a 6^th Kyu Judo player and the little sticker I got to put in my licence book were both red. By the way that little book and the fact there’s now writing in it is one of the things I’m proudest to own.

Anyway, a belt is a belt, red is red, so I tied a belt on and off we went. Jamie’s doing a lot of work with gymnastic stretches at the moment and it’s paying dividends. Judo, fundamentally, relies on your flexibility as much as your strength and skill so the bendier I am, the better position I’m starting from. If nothing else, the bendier I am the more capable I am of wriggling out of holds and the more able I am to throw myself around the mat. That’s coming too, especially my forward rolls, as was demonstrated by the forward break falls I did last week. It’s not impressive by any standards, but I’m quite proud of being six foot one, 22 stone and able to execute a pretty damn good forward roll.

By the way, that little fact was me sharing. You may all begin colouring in your pictures of me green and marking them Shrek now.

Anyway, the techniques this week were a couple of turns, which are really important. If you’re thrown during a Judo bout, and your opponent isn’t quick enough, you can turtle. You pull your arms and legs in make yourself as small and heavy as possible and bank on them either wearing themselves out trying to move you, the fight being restarted on your feet or them screwing up and giving you the chance to fight from the ground. The two techniques we learnt were great for countermanding this, the first involving grabbing your opponent under the arm pits, tucking your head under their right arm and rolling sideways with them going over the top. Do it right, you basically land with them in a chest hold and, well…I have a lot of chest. Do it wrong, they’re still in trouble but you’re in line with them when you should be at ninety degrees to them. We did this a few times, and some we got wrong and some we got right. That’s how it works, after all, we’re COLOR TO BE DETERMINED LATER belts now.

The second technique was similar but way more fun. From a standing position you grab your opponent under the armpits, haul them up against your knees, bump your legs against them and fall backwards. Do it right, they basically fly where you want them to and this one? This one we nailed. Steve and I are both drawn to ‘No you’re going OVER THERE’ techniques and this is just the ticket. I think I can add it to my arsenal (Arsenal in this case being two throws and three hold downs plus some stuff I still need to do the maths on) after another week or so.

Then the real fun began. Jamie’s very fond of what I call ramping randori, starting with throws and nothing else and building up to full blown bouts. This was what we got plugged into and as the lesson went on I did a full run of five opponents and five matches. It occurs to me now that this is not only the second week I’ve done that but only the second week I’ve done that. My fitness is definitely improving, my technique, well it’s on the way.

I love randori. I used to hate it but now I love it, because it’s fun, because it’s playtime. It’s a chance to try techniques out on people who trust me and who I trust and pick up some valuable tips. This week, it was also a chance to catch up with some old friends. Two matches in, I bowed, walked forward to my opponent and was met with the smiling face of Greg, who I referred to as Glen in week nine. Greg was the guy I’d had the (relatively) epic fight with, where I’d got kicked in the face and he’d had a full size me land on his wrist by accident. He waved at me with a hand in a purple cast and I boggled and asked if he was okay. He grinned, assured me he was and we bounced each other off the mat for two minutes. This one, he got the better of me on, but it doesn’t matter. Every match is a learning experience and, being honest, I was worried about him. I was worried about hurting him, and more so when Steve mentioned in passing that he was training to be a surgeon. I didn’t particularly like the idea of accidentally being complicit in the maiming of a surgeon. Being very honest I was also worried, no, frightened, that he was going to want to kick my ass seriously. He wasn’t, he didn’t, it was a fun fight in a string of fun fights that also included getting bounced around by Karen, one of the club brown belts. Karen’s huge fun to fight, because she’s small and relentless and throws something interesting into the ground work every time. This week it was an armbar and this week? I tapped out, like always. But this week, I was paying attention too. After all, I’m a EVENTUALLY WE’LL FIND OUT WHAT COLOR WE ARE belt.

Having been well and truly bounced around, and done a reasonable amount of it myself, including a hugely fun match with Steve which he won, Jamie called us over to one side of the balcony for some final exercises. These started with duck walking, where you bounce from your knees and swing your arms whilst walking in a straight line, sort of like Chuck Berry but without the decades of rock and roll and slight sense of being trapped by ‘Johnny B Goode’. This hurts, and being honest is the reason why my knee was creaking a full week after the last session but I did it anyway.

Something odd happened during this too. Three quarters of the way across the mat, my knees yelling at me, I was aware that Jamie and a couple of other people were cheering me on. This…bothered me. I’m used to the ‘Let’s cheer the fat kid who’s last home because otherwise he might die’ response in physical activity and I hate it. I don’t go at anyone else’s speed, I go at mine and I’ll damn well get it done if you give me the time to do it. On the other hand, though, this time it was…genuine. Or at least felt genuine, as people who were working as hard as I was and saw I was doing my best decided to cheer me on.

Knees still screaming, we then did this backwards. I fell over. I did it anyway, at least three quarters of the way across the mat. Then, we did bunny hops back across the mat, and then, around the time my legs were telling me that it wasn’t that they didn’t like me it was that seeing other people might be healthy, Jamie unleashed the final punishment for the night. Bunny hops back across the mat, but pushing with our legs as much as we could and using our legs to push us over into a forward roll. It was beautiful to see, using the largest muscles in the body to push the rest of the body neatly through the air in a perfect circle, heads never touching the ground.

Let’s do some maths; that sort of move plus six foot one 22 stone tired nerd who doesn’t want to quit and whose instructor is yelling ‘Come on, Alasdair! Big effort!’ equals…

The feeling of my entire body resting on the top of my head. A crackling noise from my neck. Two points of light and heat and pain on either side of my tongue. Me actually, swear to God, completing the damn roll, and sitting, legs wide, very still for a couple of seconds and wondering if I’d broken my neck.

I hadn’t. I stood, walked over to Steve and we sat out the next exercise because I was feeling a little dazed. Also, I’d bitten my tongue, very hard, with both incisors, and spent the rest of the night swallowing blood. I also spent the rest of the week talking oddly as my tongue briefly became diamond shaped.

It didn’t matter. Heading off the mat when we were done, a couple of people chatted to us. Greg gently mocked us about being red belts, technically a children’s rank, in the changing rooms (The a actual phrase was ‘Congratulations, lads, you are exactly as good at Judo as a nine year old.’) and then turned it on its head in a really interesting way. He showed us his syllabus, which made no mention of red belts for adults, assured us he’d never had to wear one and suggested we speak to the instructors about it. He…made us feel welcome, something which was only accentuated by seeing Ollie, one of the other white belts, who’d also successfully graded. We felt, the four of us in particular, like contemporaries, colleagues, a tiny little bit like a pack. We, I, appear to have been accepted. I’m not a tourist anymore, not a rookie. I’m a WHAT COLOR DO I ACTUALLY HAVE? Belt and it feels great.

We need to talk about film for a minute. In fact, we could take about film for days, film is very much my text, my safe place but that’s for another time. Instead, we need to talk about A Knight’s Tale, what it means to me and what it means to my study of Judo.

A Knight’s Tale is the story of William, a knight’s squire who, when his master dies on the way to a tournament, is urged to take his place by the other apprentices. They’ve not eaten for days, Will was always better with a sword anyway, and he secretly revels in the attention, so they put him in the armor, strap him up and he wins. In fact, he keeps winning and in order to maintain the illusion they find themselves having to recruit a female blacksmith, played by Laura Fraser and Geoffrey Chaucer, played by Paul Bettany. In any other film, Bettany would walk away with it, and, truth be told, he pretty does here, but the entire cast is flat out magnificent and the film unpacks its concepts in fascinating ways. Will’s relationship with the Black Prince is beautifully sketched, the interplay between Mark Addy and Alan Tudyk as the other apprentices is wonderful and there’s a single stylistic choice which is one of the closest approximations of pure joy that I’ve ever seen on the screen. I won’t spoil it if you haven’t seen it, because you should, for that scene if nothing else.

I mention A Knight’s Tale because at one point, this being a sports movie (Just one which is a bit clankier), Will is inevitably arrested and the villain of the piece, played by Rufus Sewell, misquotes the Book of Daniel stating that he has ‘been weighed, and measured and found wanting.’ It’s a line which the film returns to, and it’s a line which becomes the heart of the second half of the film. Will’s an apprentice, a nobody and he’s committing a crime just by being there. Whether or not the fact he’s good at it, or his knightly demeanor have nothing whatsoever to do with it. He puts in a ton of hard work and there’s no guaruntee that it’ll do anything other than get him arrested or killed. He puts everything on the line, knowing he might still fail. That has a certain emotional resonance the week of my grading.

I have never passed a physical test. Ever. I was one of the two kids in my class who failed their cycling proficiency test at Primary School, I sat my driving test multiple times and failed each one, I captained my school’s second Rugby team for no reason other than I’d been there longer thnan every other player and the first time I went to boxercise I was told, strongly, to get a drink when I turned a deeply purple colour. I don’t pass physical tests. I’m a sharp brain in a doughy body, someone who has spent their whole life two steps back from the world because I take up too much room. Or to put it another way I have been weighed, I have been measured and I have been found wanting plenty of times so the concept of being examined in how good I was at Judo filled me with something close to terror.

Actually that’s not true, what terrified me was the idea of failing where everyone else succeeded. There are four white belts and as far as I knew all four of us would be grading. Steve’s done Judo as a kid and Karate as an adult, Jim and Ollie both did Brazilian Jujitsu prior to joining the club and I can spell Brazilian Jujitsu and have watched Karate videoes on youtube, whilst eating a cheese sandwich. If anyone was going to fail, it was going to be me and that’s even before you factor in my weight, my lack of good eyesight and a dozen other different factors. As a result, I spent most of the day being haunted by one image; Steve, Olli and Jim getting their yellow belts, me failing by the tiniest of margins. The version of me standing across the mat smiling, turning and walking away. Weighed, measured, found wanting.Again.To make matters even worse, I’d sat out the Friday session the week before, which, it turns out, was essentially a How to Pass Your Grading Session.

Weighed. Measured. You know the rest.

So, on Steve’s suggestion, we turned up early and asked for mat space to practice. Grading is actually a very simple process; you just have to answer two questions, know some Japanese terminology and be able to demonstrate five throws and five holddowns. Simple, right? Especially after ten weeks.

I knew three hold downs. I was okay on two throws out of three, not five. We worked pretty hard as a result, walking through multiple practices of each technique both the motions and completing it. We did it at half speed, because we’re not idiots, but even at half speed this is a tough sport. You get picked up and put on the mat, hard, over and over and by the time the lesson started, we were both very, very warmed up and as ready as we were ever going to be. We even had a plan; obviously we’d be working together so on the hold downs we’d struggle enough to look convincing but not so much that we’d tire the person being assessed out. Easy, simple.

Wrong.

After the warm up, Steve was called over to do his grading and I was put in with the class. To the wet, apologetic sound of our plan collapsing under the weight of logic, I sparred with five different people as we worked on how to do throws right and left handed, going backards, forwards, sideways, stationary and at speed. Backwards throws are particularly fun because if you’re moving backwards your opponent thinks they’re on a winner, they step forward, you sweep their legs away and you both hit the mat. The secret is, make sure they hit it first.

Sparring at the top of the lesson is always a little weird because there’s no aggression but a lot of energy and focus. It’s also really interesting to do as a white belt because you’re essentially getting one to one coaching some of the time too, in between the violence. I remember sparring with a green belt who put me down, I got back up and he said ‘You got a grading tonight?’ I nodded, said I was worried and threw him. He got back up, smiled and said ‘You’ll do fine, your osoto otoshi’s great.’ and threw me again. Polite violence, a good conversation, reassurance. All those things and more in nothing more complex than four motions and a breakfall.

My last bout was with Wes, the US marine who also teaches at the class and by this stage we were drilling to land a throw, move to newaza or ground work and put our opponent in a hold. We locked up and Wes, as usual, didn’t make eye contact. He and a couple of the others never do this and it’s interesting because you don’t need to look at your opponent, you can feel where they are, what they’re doing. He threw me, put me in a hold, I did the same and suddenly, he was looking at me. In fact, he was looking at where I was positioned, whether I was actually holding him down. I was being assessed and after a few seconds he nodded, said ‘good’ and up we got. This went on until the last hold I was going to be graded on, the chest hold. I put Wes down, locked it in and he looked at me and said ‘What are you doing?’

‘The chest hold?’

‘Push down, come on! A guy your size I shouldn’t be able to breathe!’

So I did and then some more and then some more and finally, he nodded and up we got. We locked up again one alst time and he smiled and said ‘You’re not nice to your opponent on the mat, on the mat? You crush them. You buy them a drink in the bar afterwards, that’s when you’re nice.’

Show up. Work hard. Fight. And in my case, be graded. I was up.

I didn’t get a chance to talk to Steve, just got called over and bounced on the balls of my feet until it was time to go. I felt weird, calm, focussed, not worried, just…ready. I wonder if getting ready to compete is going to feel the same. I suspect it’s going to involve a lot more fear and nausea followed by hysterical laughter when I finish my first fight.

This time though, there was no laughter. Just Phil calmly telling me to execute a back breakfall, which I did, followed by a side breakfall. I did a front one and he gently pointed this out and even more gently guided me through the ten seconds of ‘OH GOD I’VE FAILED ALREADY’ hysteria that was clearly written all over my face. It turned out I had to do three front break falls anyway so I did my side one, then two more front. By the way, a front break fall is a forward roll off one shoulder and I’m surprisingly good at them. Backward rolls? Let’s just say my natural grace is in the mail.

Techniques were next and two of the yellow belt throws are amongst my favorites. Osoto Otoshi is lovely, nothing more than stepping to the side of your opponent, putting one foot behind them and shoving them backwards. I nailed that and nailed Deashi Barai, my other favourite following it. That’s as simple; wait for your opponent to move forward onto you, sweep their outer leg and power them into the mat. Again, it went well, something I was massively relieved with given I’d seriously practiced it for the first time an hour previously.

Uki Goshi followed that, or the Pussycat Dolls Hip Bump Throw as I still think of it. On big guys that’s a little difficult for me but Dave, a Scottish brown belt with a spectacularly deadpan sense of humour was very easy to throw. Plus, he sold for me like an absolute pro, executing perfect breakfalls despite being thrown by a scrappy, slightly panicked whitebelt.

So that was the vocab out of the way and the next stage was a few sentences in Fight. We did the throws again, this time transitioning through to a different hold down every time. Hold downs? Are very much my bag, as, when it comes down to it, all they actually are is restraining your opponent and lying very flat on them. Wes’ words echoing in my ears, I followed through, pushed my chest as far as I could down onto Dave’s and again, we were done. Break falls, throws, throws to hold downs and following that, escapes from hold downs all came naturally. The version of me on the other side of the mat suddenly looked further away, a little uncomfortable, a little like he was going to be beaten.

Vocab Test.

Two words, a single, completely blank mind. It was oddly restful in there, all I could hear was my breathing, echoing softly around in a lot of empty space. The other me, on the other side of the mat, began to laugh and saluted me. He turned to go, he’d won, he didn’t need to see the rest.

I scrabbled to keep the panic down, scrabbled to get focussed again. I was so close, so close that I could feel it and the image of me as the last white belt left in the shop was just that; an image. It wasn’t going to happen, I wasn’t going to let it.

I was going to think my way out of this. I paid attention to what was being said to me, how it was said, I put the bits I could remember in line and I…guessed. I had a decent shot, I knew most of it and all it was was language. I can do language. I can’t do physicality, I suck at physicality but language? Language I can damn well do.

I guessed, I got it. Phil looked up at me, smiled and said ‘You’ve passed, well done mate.’

I swear to God the triumphant Top Gun guitar theme started playing in my mind as I walked over to the rest of the class. A Steve shaped pink blur looked over at me and I gave him the thumbs up, he gave me one back. We’d done it. We’d done it and after two hours of physical exercise I was all set to go again. Put me in, set me in front of someone else and whether or not they’re going down they’re damn well going to have to work to put me down. I felt great, I felt strong, I felt ready and that feeling lasted exactly as long as it took me to get two steps into the warm down. Everyone else was moving with grace and speed and control. I was, well…let’s just say I was moving. For a while. Then I stopped.

We lined up and Jamie told the class we’d passed. We were called out one by one to get our licences and clapped on the way back to the line. As we were dismissed, Wes shook our hands, Gareth congratulated us and Phil quietly reminded us of the phrases that, it turned out, we’d both tripped up on. Florien, who six weeks earlier had dropped me very hard on my shoulder, even stopped to congratulate us.

Someone else didn’t. The version of me I always stand across from didn’t congratulate me. He looked at me, for a long time and didn’t say anything. He wasn’t smiling, and he still isn’t. He knows he’s in a fight now.

I’m writing this the Sunday after the grading and it’s taken four days to get my knees working properly again. I’m tired, I’m sore and I’m very aware that I no longer have a safety blanket. I’m not a white belt anymore, my job is no longer to fail better next time. My job now is to get better and to keep getting better, because no one’s going to go easy on me anymore. I’ve got a belt, I’ve got a rank and that means I need to work harder not just for me, but for everyone else. For the next tubby thirtysomething white belt who doesn’t know if this is a good idea or not. Him, especially, I’m looking forward to working with.

I’ve progressed. I’ve learnt a huge amount in the last three months and whilst none of it’s been easy it’s all been fun, even being kicked in the face. The ground beneath me used to be white but now it’s yellow. Three months back, a fat, frightened man with crappy eyesight is wondering whether or not he’s made the right choice. Now, a less frightened, less fat man (Who still has crappy eyesight) is looking ahead to his next grading, for orange belt, in a couple of months. I have been weighed, I have been measured and I have not been found wanting, not even close. Who knows, maybe they’ll make a knight of me yet.

Three impressions. A voice first, ‘DON’T CHASE HIM!’ being yelled at me as my opponent dances in, grabs me, turns me, dances out and I do my best to chase him and my best isn’t good enough. He’s smaller and faster and better at this than me but if I can just keep up, just match his speed…I’m going to be lose.

I stand still. He approaches me. I throw him.

There’s something in my face. I’m kneeling, my opponent beneath me trying to wriggle free and I am not letting him. He pulls his left leg up and over my shoulder and across my face and that’s fine because he’s not going anywhere and, weirdly, neither am I. I’m working hard, I’m working longer than I’ve ever done before but I’m not panicking, not overstretched. He’s on the floor. I’m above him. He’s not going anywhere. Then he draws his foot back and I move forward and his foot moves forward and-

I’m kneeling on the floor, looking at my opponent as he pulls himself upright. Jamie’s yelling something at him and cuffs him on the arm. My lip feels a little big, a little sore and there’s something in my mouth, something which comes away red. I stand up, we lock up, we go again.

Judo, for me, sits on the borderline between polite and brutal. It’s a sport which consists of countless variations on the same basic movements, the physical language that I’ve spoken about before. Twist one way you do one throw, twist another you do a second. You trip and be tripped, pull and push, fall and get back up again and content yourself with the knowledge that good students, good teachers, will help you back up when you fall.

But they will do their best to push you over first.

We had a visitor at Judo this week, a former instructor and heavyweight member of the English squad. He was an instructor when Phil, the older instructor who looks after the lower grades was in his 20s and the first look I got at him was a very serious, very large man making his way down the hall towards the mat. My first thought, because I tend to go there first, was we were going to be graded this week and as a result, I was doomed. I wasn’t ready, I needed more practice, I hadn’t even made any flashcards. I mentioned this to Steve, who hadn’t seen the gentleman at all, and he looked at me thought for a moment and politely asked if I was hallucinating Mr Miyagi from The Karate Kid movies again. One time, one time and it just never gets left behind.

Our visitor turned out to be a former member of the British team who was also a former instructor at the Railway Institute Club, an instructor who taught Phil, our instructor, when he was in his twenties. I was still trying to do the maths on exactly how old he was during the first third of the session, which was sparring with people and using control games to learn how to move, feint and avoid. Holding one hand in the back of your belt, you face off with your opponent and try and hit a particular part of their body with the flat of your hand. If you’re small and nimble and fast this is great. If you’re larger, slower and have bad eyesight, this is necessary.

There’s a moment in Redbelt, one of David Mamet’s best films where the female lead comes to see Mike, the main character at his Jujitsu studio. She talks herself out of learning the martial art and is in the process of leaving when Mike, standing at the opposite end of the room says:

‘Can I strike you here?’

She thinks for a moment and says ‘No.’ He tells her to move to where he can strike her and she does, standing in front of him. He asks again ‘Can I strike you there?’ she says yes and he sayd

‘Don’t stand there.’

Judo is all about not standing there, not moving to a spot where your opponent can take you and even better, making sure that they move somewhere you can take them. I hated these drills. They made me feel fat and slow and stupid but they didn’t last long and I got better as they went on. Sort of like the violent version of eating your greens being good for you.

From there, we went onto working on a particular throw and Steve and I got pulled to one side by this veteran. He was our size and then some and together we walked, very slowly, through the throw until we got the movements down, got it tweaked, got it right. Or, at the very least, right enough for starters. There is a huge amount of subtlety and care to Judo, movements which aren’t apparent but if you can tailor them to your size, make the difference between a clear throw and a scrappy one. We spent half an hour being taught by a forty year veteran and that experience, that ability to get deep into conversation with someone who speaks the language fluently, was extraordinary. This was a man who was much further along the road than we were but was still learning, still adapting and still travelling down the road. He was in the process of getting over knee surgery, was cautious, in pain at times but kept going. He was fighting too, not just opponents but, like we all do, himself. For me, that fight is with my lack of confidence, my physical fitness. For him it was getting past a knee operation, learning how to move again. It was tough, it hurt, he kept going. So we did too.

The end of the session, after practicing the technique we had what Steve refers to as a solid half hour of ‘Fight Club’. Randori, or sparring, is practice fighting, at competition speed for some, at a speed you can still breathe at for others. I had a couple of bouts, including one with Karen who, at one point, I threw. In typical Yorkshire Judo fashion she plummeted to the ground cheerfully saying ‘Nice one!’ before picking herself up and putting me down. We chatted as the fight finished, both opting to take a breather and as we did so she said ‘You and your mate are really coming on, you’re getting much smoother now.’ That felt great. Karen’s a brown belt, she’s an excellent Judoka and if she thinks I’m getting better? I’m getting better.

We watched Steve finish a match and take a breather, and after chatting to him for a moment, I went back on. My opponent was a yellow belt, a third my size. He’s good, very good in fact and when we begun he dived for me and we began turning and turning, looking for an opening, looking for a way to take each other off balance. He threw me, we moved to groundfighting and something odd happened.

We kept going. He didn’t shut me down in fifteen seconds, I didn’t tap out. He tried a hold, I broke out of it, I tried a hold, he broke out of it and round we went. We finally got stood back up and started again and again, I tried matching his pace. As an aside, I was aware this session that the Alasdair is Having Too Much Fun siren hadn’t gone off, hadn’t even thought about it in fact. I was tired though and getting more so as we yanked each other around again and this time, the veteran yelled ‘DON’T CHASE HIM!’

I stopped. He moved onto me, and I stopped and I threw him, hard. I followed him down, tried for a choke, he broke free, tried something, I broke free and we rolled over. He tried a scarf hold on me and I just…sat up. I moved him off me, looked for a choke and he rolled out of the way and this time he was on his back. That is not where you want to be, especially if your opponent is two thirds bigger than you and I dived on him, distantly aware that Steve was laughing, yelling ‘CRUSH HIM!’ and he and Karen were commenting that I was doing pretty well.

I was aware my opponent was panicking too. Aware that he was trying to break free and even as he pulled his foot back, even as his heel bounced off my face I wasn’t angry. I was very calm, very focussed. I’d set my feet. I wasn’t chasing him. I wiped my lip, was distantly aware of my opponent being told off by Jamie and we stood up. We fought again, he threw me and again, on the ground he could do absolutely nothing. Time was called on sparring and I stood up and, to my surprise, found two things were happening. I was utterly calm and grinning like a wolf firstly and secondly, I had something left in the tank. I could have sparred again, I wanted to spar again and that was something more than the standard survivor’s joy, something deeper. I’d had fun. I wanted to have fun again. Instead, I asked my opponent if he was okay, as he was holding his wrist and he said he was, we got up, bowed to each other and joined the class’ warm up.

I made a point of talking to him because the last thing I want to do is carry macho bags between sessions. I hadn’t won, make no mistake, but I hadn’t lost and the last thing I wanted was for him to think I was lording it over him. Besdies, all that had happened was I’d held the line and he’d broken against me. I was the one able to bounce up and walk away, apparently grinning through blood stained teeth but that didn’t mean he hadn’t done well. We’d had a great conversation, one that had left us both battered and bruised and able to speak the language better. For that? Being kicked in the face is no price at all.

I am, as we’ve discussed before, six foot one, overweight, both softly and well spoken and a big, big nerd. This combination, along with my fondness for thinking, reading, non physical activies and being the son of a teacher who taught at one of the same schools I attended combined to make me one single word; target. I got bullied, a lot. A lot of it was passive aggressive sniping, a lot of it was intimidation and none of it was violence.

Let me say that again, none of it was violence. I had the same quotient of deeply rubbish fights everyone else did at Primary School, actually, no that’s not true. I was occasionally provoked into a fight at Primary School but it never went far, just pushing, shoving and a small amount of physical contact. I can remember Darth Vadering someone by the throat one day when I got particularly angry but that was it. I got bullied, I took it, I got bullied some more, I took it, lather, rinse and repeat.

I did this for two reasons. Firstly, and most importantly, because confrontation terrifies me. I will cross the road to avoid telling someone something they don’t want to hear, will soak up damage and hurt and guilt because that’s easier for me than standing up for myself. Some of this comes from the fact that when it comes down to it, I’m a nice guy, some of it’s because I’m Catholic enough for the Catholic guilt to kick in and some of it is pure unadulterated terror.

Of me.

I’m big. I’m not the largest person I know in terms of weight, height or muscle bulk but I’m pretty big and that brings a social contract with it, one that’s signed in utero and that you never get to finish. If you’re big, you are aware, all the time, of the damage you can do. You’re aware of what could happen if you ever cut loose, the damage you could do to someone and to your life. I always remember, when things got bad, being told that the best way to get a bully to back off was to punch them very hard in the face and break their nose. It’d bleed, it’d swell, they’d look ridiculous and they’d be in too much pain and embarassed to try it again. Vision of Batman-style disfigured bullies running through my mind, I never did it, firstly because they’d get better and then I’d get hurt and secondly because of control.

If we’re talking about control, it’s probably time we talked about Michael Garibaldi. Garibaldi is one of my pantheon of heroes, a fictional character from the old TV show Babylon 5. The station’s chief of security, Garibaldi is tall, gregarious, funny, odd and completely and utterly nailed down. He’s a man who’s made horrible mistakes and the only thing that terrifies him more than that is the thought of doing it again, something that becomes overt when the station command staff are required to express their deepest fears as part of a ceremony. The site of Garibaldi, my height, my build, my sense of humour and my hairline saying:

‘I am terrified, all the time, of what would happen if I ever lost control.’

is seared into my mind because I know, exactly, how that feels. When you’re big, you accept that you’re going to be a quarter step back from the world, a gear down because that way you’re not going to cause any damage.

Now, before you all back away slowly from the blog trying not to make eye contact let me clarify. I am not the Incredible Hulk, I’m not convinced that a red cyclone of martial violence waits to erupt from my soul because, well, there’s not really much room for it in there in amongst all the DVDs and Doctor Who tat. What I am convinced of though, is this; I’ve never been in a fight, I’ve never been in a physical confrontation and that simple fact terrifies and enthrals me.

It terrifies me because last session I got shown what it feels like to be manhandled. Jim, nice, polite, courteous Jim, got me within about ten seconds of passing out. He sunk a rear naked choke in during sparring which is essentially where you try and pop your opponent’s head like a spot between your arms and if you keep it on long enough, the blood and air supply to the brain is shut off. Long enough is about ten seconds. I would guess I was in the choke for five. I made gurgling sounds. I still felt it in the soft tissue under my chin three days later. I was in a fight. I lost. It scared me.  It scared me so much, in fact, that it was an act of will to go to the next lesson, knowing I’d be doing that again. I did, I turned up, and, because the universe has a sense of humour, I was partnered with….Jim. For pretty much the entire lesson. Now, just as I’m not the Incredible Hulk, Jim isn’t some giggling pscyhopath who likes hurting people. He’s a guy my size, with more experience than me, who’s more prepared to put the aggression in than I am.

He’s also as unsure, as unconfident at times, as I am which was extraordinary to realise. As we worked through the drills, the pair of us ran through each step, did verbal checklists for each other and made sure the other one was landing the technique right. It was fascinating, and massively reassuring to experience and the lesson was immensely positive and fun. We’re all travelling the same road, as I’ve talked about before, and the funny thing is, whilst we’ve all got the same map, we’re not expected to travel at the same pace. We work, we travel, in courteous solitude, punctuated only by the sound of people hitting the floor and, from me at least, frequent giggles. Because even now, I’m still not quite able to shut up especially when something’s going well. Because make no mistake, Judo is fun. There is elegance and grace to this sport and an intellectual element that both Steve and I are devouring like large, starving men at a banquet but there’s also an inherent challenge to it. It’s a language and a language which changes depending on how loud you speak, how dynamically you act. I’ve been mumbling whilst Jim, and everyone else, has been engaging in a full on conversation. Because I’m still the fat kid at the disco on some level, that’s started to push me further away, tying in to the frustration at not being brilliant at this yet, to create a situation where I don’t try because I’m scared to fail and I’m even more scared to try let alone to win. I mean, why should I win?

Why do I deserve to?

Because I show up. Because I work hard. Because I have to get to the point where I’m gagging and retching before I step off the mat and the only way I’ll get that to stop is if I keep pushing, keep working, keep getting back up and most importantly, start trying to win. Because I do something brave every time I take my glasses off and step onto the mat. Judo is fun but the price you pay for that is accepting it’s tough too. As well as the intellectual and spiritual element of the sport, when it comes down to it, I’m learning how to fight. One of the first things they said to us was this is a rough sport and, believe me, it is. Nine weeks in I have a shoulder that’s tight every morning, a right wrist that’s taken three weeks to get to almost full rotation and knees that creak for twenty four hours after a session. But oddly, that’s a good thing. Because every time I feel one of these nagging little injuries it makes me smile at the hard work that led to me earning them. I’m out of my comfort zone and facing some of the most difficult things I’ve ever faced in my life, all of whom wear Judo suits and none of whom have recognisable faces without my glasses.

I’ve never been kicked. I’ve never been punched. I’ve never stood across from someone knowing with absolute certainty that they were going to their best to hurt me and the only way to avoid that was to subdue them, knock them down, choke them out, break their will, before they did the same thing to me. There have been countless opportunities for me to do that and I’ve talked or joked or begged or ducked my way out of each of them because I used to be terrified of finding out what would happen if I lost control. Not anymore. Now I know there’s a difference between losing control and letting go and that I can do one without doing the other. I trust my opponents completely but up until now, I haven’t trusted myself because I’ve not had the confidence to untense, to stand up, to come to grips.

Not anymore. I’m not Mike Garibaldi. I’m not the Hulk. I’m a man learning how to fit into his own body, and gaining the confidence to use that body in a way which fits it. I’m shutting up, I’m showing up and I’m coming to grips. I owe myself nothing less.

This lesson took a little while to process. So much so in fact that I’m actually two weeks in the hole on this column, it’s taken so long to figure out how I felt about it. It wasn’t bad, not at all, but, three things happened this lesson that brought me up short and forced me to think about exactly how I feel about this sport, and what it does for me, and what I will inevitably have to do as I continue with it.

So with that slightly portentous opening out of the way, let’s talking about grading. Grading is the system which denotes how much you know, how experienced you are and how good you are at what you know. It’s also one of those pieces of martial arts iconography that’s bled through into popular culture. After all, ‘black belt’ is synonymous with ‘expert’ and it’s not uncommon for phrases like ‘He has a black belt in geek fu’ to be thrown around amongst my circle of friends. It denotes excellence, expertise, study and of course being remarkably good at a particular style of violence.

However, the road to black belt is long and varied and begins, at the bottom of the pile, and the other end of the mat, with white belt. At the start of every lesson, we line up along one wall in order of experience; black belts, then brown belts, then down into the colors, blue and orange and yellow and at the far end of the mat, us. White belts. White belts have four jobs; to shut up, to listen, to get things wrong, and to fail better next time. I excel at three of these jobs and am getting better at shutting up. Talking, for me, is a coping mechanism. It’s my brain bulling it’s way to the front of my life and going ‘So you’re doing something physical, right? Great! Let’s have a conversation about it? Let’s THINK about st-Oh, wait hang on why are we lying down and within sight of unconscious?’ My brain, ladies and gentlemen, is sometimes not my ally.

Anyway, halfway through this lesson, we were given five minutes ‘play time’ where we could try any technique that we’d been shown and the instructors would come round and help us out where needed. The week before, Karen had shown me a particularly nice sweeping variant of Uchi Mata and as we were focussing on that throw again this lesson, I started walking through it with Steve. After a few minutes, the instructor came over, asked what we were doing, corrected our stance and technique and said ‘You know what? Why don’t you study one of the throws you need for the grading?’

Steve and I looked at each like large, exhausted dogs being shown a complicated card trick and nodded. The instructor took us over to the wall to something I am reliably informed was a visual chart of the moves we need to know to get our first grading passed. He then went on to show us one of these moves, a throw which, like all my favourite techniques, is simple; you grab the back of your opponents’ belt, bend your knees, bump your hip into their chest, lift them off the ground and roll them over your hip onto the ground. It’s simple, it’s effective, it’s nasty and it has a name which I was far, far too tired and focussed to remember so for now it’s just called the pussycat dolls hip bump throw. Which is not only oddly descriptive, it’s also the most obvious, embarassing way I think of to make myself remember to learn the damn technique names.

That’s now what’s important though. What’s important is that one of the instructors told us we should grade. Not just Steve, no ‘You, overweight Manx dork, you will stay a white belt forever for we shall never let you grade! Ha ha ha haaaaaaaa!”, both of us. I’m good enough to do this. I’m good enough to have a shot at getting my second belt. That’s something I’ll be carrying with me for a while.

Especially as the second thing that happened this lesson was that I hit the wall. In fact, I actually hit two walls, one a physical one during a fight and the other a mental one. I wasn’t instantly great at Uchi Mata this week, I wasn’t instantly great at the Pussycat Dolls Hip Bump Throw, I landed hard more than once. It felt, for the first time like I was running to keep still, to keep a fragile grip on what was going on around me. It felt, in short like, I was having to work hard and at first, by the end of the lesson, that felt oddly negative to me. Suddenly, the me on the other side of the mat was very close, inside my guard whispering to me that this was the wall, this was the thing that would stop me going. After all, I’d been there for seven weeks now, surely that was enough?

So I did what I always do about this; I talked it through with several people and, most importantly, myself. I asked why it had felt negative, why I’d felt a little out of control, even a little frightened and the answer that came back was very simple;

Excuse me, could you show me the way to the town hall please?

Judo, for me at least, is a language and up until now I’ve been learning the vocabulary. It’s easy because vocab, when it comes down to it is pointing at a thing and telling you what it’s name is in both languages. This is a throw, this is a scarf hold, this is a choke. It’s all three or four steps, three or four motions and all you have to do is move through them and voila! You’re a white belt. A white belt who’s effectively saying individual words, or individual techniques, over and over and they’re not quite working right but you speak slowly and loudly enough and the person you’re talking to will get the gist and help you out. Until, that is, you start trying to string words together into sentences and suddenly you’re asking where the town hall is when really you want to be shoving your opponent back, sweeping their legs and putting them in a hold down. Or, in the immortal words of Eric Morcambe, I’m playing all the right notes, but not necessarily in the right order. This is the wall, this is the point where enthusiasm and growing ability and fitness hit the red line of possibility. This was the point people quit at, where something stops being fun and shiny and new and you find yourself faced with a question;

Do you want this?

I do, very badly, which brings me to the third thing that happened this lesson; violence and how I feel about it. You see, for all the courtesy and philosophy, when it comes down to it I’m learning how to fight. Throws don’t just get your opponent off their feet they hurt, you literally slam your opponent into the ground and once they’re down there? You choke them, you pin them, you restrict their breathing or you hyper extend a joint so they’re in so much pain they tap out. This is a sport where you win by inflicting pain and in order to be successful, you have to prepared to both give and receive.

Make no mistake I’m not talking about the sort of macho, chest-pounding nonsense that so often gets in the way of people talking sensibly about any form of martial art. What I’m talking about is the combination of trust and focussed aggression you need to have to be successful. You have to want to win, you have, crucially, to feel like you deserve to win and what I realised this lesson was that I don’t. When I spar with people, most of the time, it’s an odd combination of me working at their speed to the point of being frantic and relaxing the moment they throw me. I’m down, they’ve won, because they always do, because I’m a white belt. In fact, I’m the least physically capable white belt so why should I try and win? Why should I make them work harder than they already have?

The answer lies in the idea of Judo as a language. Sparring is a conversation and if you don’t hold up your end of it, you’re actually being rude. Your opponent expects you to do your level best to try and beat them, because they’re doing the same because that way you both communicate, you both learn and if you get beaten, you fail better next time. After all, you, or I, am a white belt and that’s my job.

Which is fortunate as failing better is something I’m getting very good at. The most fun I had this lesson was sparring with Ollie, one of the other white belts. I don’t hold back with Ollie, I don’t even think, and neither does he. This time, I got him down and, because he’s studied Brazilian Jujitsu as well, he instantly began fighting from his back, using his legs to control my position. He locked in a strangle, I did the same, he straightened his legs and…

I fell on him. He couldn’t move, neither could I. We looked at each other, our hands wrapped around each other’s jackets and around each other’s throats and we just started giggling. That was a good conversation, and it showed me that I can fight, can be competitive but still keep within good practice.

That’s my primary concern, not holding back but not letting go too much, and if the fight with Ollie showed I can do it, the fight with Jim showed I need to keep trying. Jim’s my size, used to do Brazilian Jujitsu as well and, for want of a better word, manhandled me this session. He’s strong and fast and locked me into a rear naked choke which was the nastiest choke I’ve ever had. He locked one arm around my neck, put the other arm behind me and linked hands and basically tried to pull my head off. It nearly worked too and my neck still hurt three days later. Being honest, so did my pride.

I’ve not done myself any favours with my passivity or my opponents for that matter. We learn by trying, by failing and if I’ve not been trying hard enough then I need to shake that off and shake it off now. My instructors think I’m worth putting up for grading and that’s both wonderful and terrifying. After all, there are four white belts at my class, three of them have done martial arts before and one writes a blog about Judo. I won’t be the only one that fails, I want my belt and in order to get it I need to get more aggressive and more focussed at the same time. Or to put it another way, I know enough vocabulary now, it’s time I started turning up for the conversation.

This week started with a choice; go it alone or just go? I meet Steve at the railway station at 7.45 before every session and, because it’s me, I tend to be about five to ten minutes late. This week, I was five to ten minutes early, my gi and my water in my bag, ready to go. So, I texted Steve and told him I was on site.

He texted me back to say he might not be able to make it.

=The interesting thing about having a training partner is that whilst it’s massively useful, it’s also something which can become a crutch. We are the two heaviest people at Judo, we’re some o the only people in their thirties and we’re the only two beginners. There’s a lot of common ground there and common ground can lead to reliance. Which, when life intervenes and stops someone from attending means it feels a litle bit like you’ve had your legs taken out from under you. Which leads to the question, and cheap The Clash reference, at the top of this week’s entry.

Four weeks ago I would have panicked, curled up in a ball, felt physically sick at the thought of being the only person I knew there. This week, I did something a little different. I sat down and I talked to myself about it:

‘So what if Steve doesn’t make it? What do I do?’

‘You could go home.’

‘And never go again because I’d be too embarrassed because I was too frightened to turn up without my training partner.’

‘So what’s the other option?’

‘Turn up.’

‘You’re fat and crap at this. What if they laugh at you?’

‘Ah, now, I am fat and I am crap at this but? I also have crappy eyesight so if someone does laugh at me, I won’t see them do it.’

‘…touche. What if you go and get hurt?’

‘Same thing could happen every week.’

‘What if you go and hurt someone else?’

‘See previous answer.’

‘What if you get something wrong?’

‘I’m a white belt, getting stuff is basically my profession.’

‘What if you can’t do any of it?’

‘Then the simple act of going will get me a little bit closer to the level of fitness where I’ll be able to do some of it won’t it?’

‘Look, you could go and you’ll be the physically weakest person there, the least able, the most overweight and they might laugh at you and you might get hurt and you might hurt someone and they might sit you down and say you’re just not fit enough and they want you to leave and never come back and haven’t you wanted to try this sport since you were fifteen? Do you really want to be crushed like that?’

‘Yeah but it’s only an hour, anyway, I need to go get changed now.’

The Socratic dialogue may not have been quite as witty as this but there was a very specific moment where I knew I was going to turn up and…calm just settled over me. I stood up, walked to the Institute, got changed into my stuff, had the traditional three minute struggle to get my wedding ring off and finally stood in front of the mirror in the changing room, wearing my gi. I looked myself straight in the eye and said ‘You can do this.’ and I turned and walked up to the dojo. Now, whilst I own a gi I don’t own a white belt yet and as a result the jacket hangs open until I get to the dojo and use one of their own. The dojo itself is a balcony at the far end of the Railway Institute and to get there you have to walk past four full-sized Badminton courts, all of which tend to be in use. Or to put it another way, I had to walk about an eighth naked past a group of complete strangers. Four weeks ago, hell, three weeks ago that would have filled me with fear. This week I walked up to the dojo, sat and watched the final twenty minutes of the Junior’s class and tried very hard to focus on technique and not on what was about to happen.

To be clear, I have two big weaknesses as a Judoka at the moment; fitness and experience. Which is a little like saying the only things stopping me being a heart surgeon are steady hands and a lack of willing volunteers. Judo pushes me to the limit, physically and, sometimes, over it and whilst that’s starting to change, it’s going to take a while. Experience is, weirdly, a little easier and I make a point of tring to look at how other people execute moves, try and break it down as much as possible. This constant study is something which seems to be at the heart of Judo as a martial art, and as I sat and watched I noticed a couple of instructors not only walking people through the basic movements of a throw but practicing them themselves. Everyone learns from everyone else, everyone learns simply by being there, and that idea, that level of equality is something that fascinates me about Judo. There’s a clear hierarchy, two in fact, with instructors and students, and each colour of belt, but there’s also a unifying idea that we’re all on the same path, just moving at different speeds.

Steve arrived in the nick of time and we were called onto the mat to begin the lesson. It was a huge relief to see him, even though I’d been quite ready to do the lesson alone and it was more of a relief to see that I was able to do almost the entire warm up this week. Last week I had to step out just over halfway through but this week I was able to do almost all of it and we segued from that into movement drills. One of the most important things in any combat sport is to control the space and how you and your opponent move around it, whether that combat spot involves weapons, contact or grappling like Judo. If you define the pace, the speed and the direction of the fight, your opponents’ already on their back foot and that makes them easier to control and, in theory, to beat them.

I say in theory because one of the things this lesson taught me over and over was how far I’ve got to go, as well as how far I’ve already come. We started out taking turns moving around the mat in pairs, one leading and trying to close the distance and one keeping the distance, with no grips. It was a fascinating drill, one that took me out of the ‘get a grip, try a throw, keep breathing’ mantra and into the idea of using movement and direction to get the first advantage before any other element of the fight had begun.

It was also something which was built on again and again over the course of the lesson as we rotated through sparring partners and drills. The first was to go throw for throw, practicing putting your opponent down and then letting them straight back up whilst the second was a throw followed by a hold down. This, being bulky, is something that I’m good at and Kesa Gatame, the Scarf Hold, is one of my favorite techniques. You roll your opponent onto their back, wrap one arm around their neck, reach around the back of their right arm and put it at full extension whilst holding it in place and lean on their chest. You can apply extra pressure by locking your hands together behind their head, or leaning down so you use your head to keep their’s in place and there’s an elegant, and nasty, add on to it should your opponent get their right arm free. Simply put, you let them get it free, help them even by jamming it as far across their face as possible and using your head to hold it in place. As someone who’s had this done, I can say that humanity was not meant to breathe heavy cotton. It’s uncomfortable to the point of unbearable and, like all the techniques I’ve learnt so far remarkably simple.

This particular drill I was partnered with one of the female students and off we went, moving around the mat, throwing, taking down, putting Kesa Gatame on and changing over. At one point, mid throw she turned to me and said ‘Hold up a second’ and I had the deeply surreal sight of my opponent, at 45 degrees to the ground halfway through being thrown by me, holding herself perfectly still whilst another pair of students got out of the way on the mat beneath us. She of course, executed the techniques at four times the speed and far better than me but it taught me a lot about movement, stillness and control. Learn where you are, learn when to keep still and move when you need to.

To say nothing of learning when to take a rest. I’m feeling a lot better than I was last week and I pushed myself a little bit more, and of course, paid the price for it. There were a couple of points where I was at the red line, retching and not quite able to catch my breath. Steve and I christened the retching as my ‘You’re Having Too Much Fun’ siren and whilst it kicked in again it didn’t kick in half as much as it did the week before. It also led to the deeply polite, and surreal, moment where mid-spar with Wes the marine, he stopped and asked if I needed to take a rest as it began. I managed to gaps out that I didn’t and he smiled, nodded, gave me some useful tips and, of course, knocked me on my arse more than once.

The drill that really stuck with me this time, however, was one where two crash mats were lined up across the mat and the class lined up, half in front of one, half in front of the other. The person at the front of the line threw everyone else onto the mat, who then cycled around to the other mat and were thrown there. Once the person at the front of each line had thrown everyone, they then joined the line and the next person took their place. Everyone throws everyone else, everyone’s on the same path, fellow travellers, all over again.

This threw up a couple of things for me. I was gently mocked, more than once, for letting the smaller students throw me very easily. In fact, I was mocked for letting Wes, who is all muscle and about fifty pounds heavier than me, throw me. I was told to go back around and Wes smiled, grabbed my jacket and said ‘Don’t worry, I’ll get you. You’re big but you’re not that big’ and then executed a perfect throw which bounced me onto the mat with absolute force and absolute control. So, the moral to this story is; don’t help the person you’re fighting. Trust them to do their best to beat you and do them the courtesy of doing the same.

The second thing this led to was me re-learning my favorite throw. Tai Otoshi is beautiful, a simple, elegant throw which completely left my mind last week. This week, with the help and occasional good natured berating of Phil, the instructor, I used Tai Otoshi to throw everyone in the class. Some of them probably helped me a little, but oddly that’s not something I feel like criticising.

Movement was the thing I took away from this lesson, movement as progress and movement as motion. Progress physically as I get fitter, a little stronger, a little better at the techniques I’m learning. Movement as I learn to control my own body and where my opponent puts their’s, whether through drills or through the sort of direct, explosive, decisive movement that Wes both told me and then used to throw me. Most importantly, movement as a journey through my chosen martial art, in the company of people doing just the same. I think I’m finally starting to enjoy the journey.

29^th November 2010

There’s a moment I’ve not been brave enough to experience for fifteen years. It’s a moment I’ve thought about a lot and, like everything in my life which I think about a lot, I’ve analysed it to death and been absolutely convinced that I knew what it would feel like and as a result, it didn’t matter if I was never brave enough to experience it. After all, bounded, king of infinite space, or as popular ’90s beat combo Go West would have it, wishful thinking.

The moment is this; I’m standing by the side of a Judo mat before my first lesson. I take a step forward and my bare foot makes contact with the mat for the first time, ever. It’s a classic bit of hero’s journey rubbish, exactly rhe sort of thing that arts post grads get mocked for, Bilbo in a gi muttering about how the road goes ever on and on even as he’s being shown how to choke someone out using their jacket. It’s a moment I’ve thought about for fifteen years and it’s a moment I experienced tonight.

The Railway Institute Judo Club owns a first floor balcony at the Railway Institute gym in York,. It;s a brilliant building, huge and arched and sitting somewhere between Dickensian and steampunk, tucked away behind the RI building itself which is, in turn, tucked into the side of the Victorian pile of York Railway Station and less than two minutes away from the city walls. Inside it’s all wooden floors, badminton courts and, in my case, the slight hint of boiled cabbage and echoes of ‘You’re the fat kid’ that I’ve had since my first games lesson at school.,

Let me tell you something about being not only the fat kid, but the fat geeky kid. It’s a fine identity, a lot of the time, especially if, like me, you’re able to parlay it into the ‘Overweight, Smart, Funny Man’ identity, or, at least, convince enough people you’re that that it doesn’t really matter. It enables you to be clever, funny, nice, a little odd, a little eccentric. It means you can be the Doctor without the TARDIS, Venkman without the Ghostbusters, Giles without Buffy and that last one is particularly apt. Because you see, one of the things I’ve come to realise about myself is that I go English and I go English hard in physical situations. I went to two lessons of boxercise eighteen months ago and I distinctly remember throwing right crosse during pad work, somehow wasting some of the only breath keeping my ridiculous frame from expiring on making jokes. My partner pointed this out, I re-focussed and I threw a punch that could actually do some damage. The lesson here is clear; shut up, stop talking, accept three facts;

-I am six feet and one inch tall

-I am broad shouldered and built large

-I do not feel comfortable with either of those facts.

I’m a brain in a meat suit and I’m always a quarter step back from that suit, that’s how it feels sometimes. I’ve done sport before, more so than I wanted to to be honest, given that I was drafted into my school rugby team based on the fact that I look like a wall but it’s always been something I’ve done not something I’ve enjoyed. Sport has been something that was foisted on me rather than something I chose, and that’s not healthy, literally. Sport, physical exercise, should be something that I enjoy for God’s sake, I mean, how else am I going to look like Henry Rollins as well as think like him?

Which brings us back to Judo, that rarest of breeds; a sport I’ve been interested in for years because it seems suited to people with my body mass, is a fantastically good way of getting confident and getting fit and crucially does not involve me getting punched in the face, because, after all, I’m just too pretty. See my previous comment about being funny rather than concentrating, something which I was all too aware of before I even turned up.

Matt Wallace is one of the best writers I know, and I know a lot of writers. His podcast series, The Failed Cities Monologues, is a toweringly ambitious two-fisted Rashomon take on cyberpunk, exploring an engineered war from the streets it’s fought on to the people moving the pieces around on the board. He’s also a ridiculously dangerous man, a former pro wrestler and martial arts polymath. He’s also built like me, which is why I asked Matt for advice about what to do before I went along. He told me three things that, I suspect, are going to be the cornerstone of my approach to the martial art:

Be silent

Be receptive

Be respectful

That was what was going through my mind tonight as I took that first step. There was none of the Bilbo, no hint of Joseph Campbell, nothing special about it, especially as I had to walk across the mat to get a jacket from the club’s stash which just about fit., but that didn’t matter. I took that first step, I felt the mat bend beneath my foot and it felt…normal, real. It didn’t feel like coming home, that’s the sort of metaphor that’s reserved for people who write about sports professionally instead of simply badly, as I’m doing here, it felt like…opening a door into a new room, one that I’ve always been meaning to open, and finding out the room inside is filled with potential.

You see, the thing I’ve only just started to figure out about the hero’s journey is that the concept itself is a misnomer. The hero’s journey is a destination, an ending as you begin the transformation from small hobbit who wants to be left alone to ringbearer, or farm boy to Jedi knight, or any of the thousands of other examples. It’s the point where real people’s stories end and characters’ stories begin. Real people’s stories begin in a Scott Pilgrim t-shirt and a pair of tracksuit bottoms with dodgy elastic and slightly unsettling bloused ankles that make them, or, in this case, me, look a little like I’m wearing pantaloons.

I still took that first step though. And all the ones that came after it as well as the breakfalls, the hold downs, the sacrifice turn, the throw and sparring. I was silent, I was receptive, I was respectful, I got my arse well and truly handed to me and I learnt not just about the art but about myself. As first steps go, it was a pretty good one.