Lifelong journey for karate students

Hollywood portrays karate in interesting ways.

Through the years, silver screen epics have led to the notion that one can take up karate on Monday and be wiping out hordes of ninjas by Thursday.

But that’s not quite right.

As wise old Mr. Miyagi correctly noted in the original Karate Kid, it takes patience and discipline to master this ancient martial art. Of course, one movie montage later, Daniel-san was crane-kicking Cobra Kai fighters into tomorrow. But Mr. Miyagi’s overall point isn’t diminished.

For serious practitioners like Chilliwack’s Robyn Orford, karate is a life-long journey.

Her trek started 14 years ago.

Fifteen years ago, Orford was playing soccer and loving it. She was getting exercise, hanging out with her friends and playing a sport she’d grown up with.

Good times.

But over time, her teammates dwindled away for various reasons, moving away for jobs or leaving to have babies and raise families. Eventually, the team disbanded, and Orford was left with nothing to fill the void.

She wanted something that would keep her fit, and she wanted something with a flexible schedule that would fit into her busy life.

Enter the karate.

“My first impression was that I felt so very unnatural,” she recalled. “You would think at 30 years old, I would have a basic understanding of how to punch or block. But karate was so fundamentally different than anything I’d done before.”

Throughout her life, athletics always came naturally to Orford. Whether kicking a soccer ball or swinging a baseball bat, she was always a standout.

But her initial karate experience was one of frustration as she struggled to cope with the rigid structure and discipline the sport requires.

“I can’t get this, I can’t even memorize the first kata (forms) that you’re supposed to learn,” she said of her early struggles. “There’s 21 movements in this first kata. A lot of them are repetitive, and I still can’t remember them. And I need to learn 15 of these to be a black belt?”

Overwhelmed at first, Orford turned things around when she turned the mountain into a mole-hill. Like the hockey player that takes it ‘one game at a time,’ she focused on the task at hand, and used each completed kata as a stepping stone to the next.

“Even the very highest level of kata that most senior black belts do, it still incorporates those very basic punches and kicks and blocks that you learned in the beginning,” Orford observed.

It takes patience.

It takes time.

Orford talks about 80-year-old Japanese masters who are still practising, still learning.

“If you want to play soccer or baseball or football, unless you’re really, really good, there’s usually an end to it at some point,” she said. “Karate is an endeavour that you can do for as long as you want. Karate is more about internal power than external power. It’s as much about your inner spirit and character as anything else.”

For outsiders, the black belt is perceived as the holy grail of karate. In truth, getting a first-degree black belt is just another baby-step.

“I think I felt the most insecure four years ago when I got my first-degree black belt,” Orford said. “People think it’s wonderful and you’re wonderful. The reality is, the first time you put on that black belt you feel like you’re back at square one. In Japan, they barely recognize you until you get your black belt. It’s the starting point.”

The whole process is remarkably different from Orford’s pre-karate experience.

In soccer, the game began and ended and there was a final score to indicate a winner and a loser. Orford has to dig deeper to find that instant gratification in karate, but it’s there.

“Did I come to that class prepared and did I learn something?” Orford said of her personal checklist. “Did I give back to the people around me? Did I bring good spirit to the class? It depends what you’re looking for, but if I can answer yes to those questions, that’s gratification for me.”

Before every class at Valley Shidokan Karate, Orford prepares by doing her personal Mokuso — a short meditation in a quiet room where she prepares for what’s to come. As she bows her head and closes her eyes, she thinks about leaving behind her work and the stresses that a wife and mother of two deals with during the day.

Finding that inner peace is key.

It helps to get her focused and keeps her motivated in a sport that doesn’t provide a lot of external validation.

“If you have self-esteem issues, it’s not a great sport for you,” Orford said with a chuckle. “No one’s going to tell you about your fabulous punch. More likely, the instructor will come by and correct it by a millimeter or point out something wrong in your stance or balance. Karate is not about compliments.”

Valley Shidokan Sensei Don Sharp is extremely accomplished and respected in the karate world, travelling near and far as a guest instructor for the Japanese Karate Association.

Orford calls him an incredible instructor. And yet, there are times when she has watched someone else find fault in Sharp’s karate technique.

“I’ll take a compliment any time I can get it, and I think it’s human nature to want that positive feedback,” Orford noted. “But the way I think of it is, if the instructor is taking a moment of his time to correct you, that means they care enough about you to want you to improve.”

Some days are harder than others, but Orford’s karate commitment has never wavered.

Few people would up-root their entire lives to pursue a sport, but that’s what Orford and her husband, Bryce, did in 2006 when they moved their young family to Japan for a year.

“Every year, the JKA provides an opportunity for someone to go to Japan, experience the culture, teach English and train in karate,” Orford said. “It never seemed like something I could do. We had a mortgage and careers and two children in school. How do you walk away from that. But the more we talked about it, the more possible it seemed. Eventually the stars aligned and we decided it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity we couldn’t pass up.”

Though the entire family ended up living in an apartment no bigger than their Canadian living room, the experience was as good as advertised.

“It absolutely was the experience of a lifetime,” she said. “It certainly gave me an appreciation of what immigrants face coming to Canada. It took so much effort doing day-to-day things. I was illiterate in Japan, but we had such a great support system that helped us to get the most out of that year.”

The Orford family returned wiser and more worldly, diving back into their old lives with a fresh new perspective.

When she first arrived at Valley Shidokan Karate, she knew little of the sport and the history behind it.

But with a decade and a half of experience under her belt, Orford is now a local leader, helping others as she was once helped.

For all that karate has given her, that may be the most gratifying experience of all.

“It’s not about what your age is, it’s about what your ability is,” Orford said. “There’s an expectation that you share your knowledge with someone else, because the ultimate goal is to see everyone progress.”

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