Board break

I was about 16 when I was testing for my black belt, which I think meant a lot more symbolically than it actually did about my strength, speed, or ability, as one might expect. It meant that I had spent a significant amount of time and energy trying to learn what I could about martial arts. And I loved it. I loved learning how to control my body, and get stronger, and find the weaknesses in my opponents. To learn how to be precise and deadly. And to have a way to focus all of the aggression that I had felt for so long.

Karate helped me to control my anger management issues - although I did continue to be a prick, and frequently hit people using the skills that I had learned. I won't pretend like it made me perfect in any sense of the word. But my anger management problem went down over time, and by the time I was earning my black belt, I had calmed down considerably from when I was a kid.

By the time I earned my black belt, I was one of the regulars of the classes - people knew me, and I knew them. I was nowhere near the strongest, or even the fastest, but I had garnered a reputation for the way that I thought about sparring in particular - if you weren't going to go all out, then what was the point? You were doing both yourself and your opponent a disservice. You were teaching yourself to hold back, and you were teaching them that in a fight, their opponent wouldn't pull everything in the book to win. I didn't play dirty. but I didn't hold back. There were a number of incidents because of it, though I never got any punishment from it. Even with the way I sparred, it was always an accident.

But it was during the testing for my black belt that I first felt like I had done something badass with my martial arts training. I was told to break two boards simultaneously with a single spinning hook kick, which challenged several skills at once. The kick itself, but also my ability to time the snap of my knee, remain accurate while spinning, and actually break the boards. The boards were separated a foot and a half, which was plenty of space to be able to break them both, but it still had to be properly timed.

I remember the nervousness I felt. I loved this kick, but I wasn't sure about actually doing it. I remember shifting back and forth on my feet, calming myself down. And then I remember the strange moment of clarity. The sweep of the room spinning around me. The sharp snap of my knee. And then the two shattered halves of board flying across the room and slamming into the far wall, over twenty feet away.