The Strongest Protect Others

Fifteen and Standing on the Mat

I was fifteen when I took my first karate class at school, looking for strength and to learn how to fight — without knowing that the class would start with a scolding for showing up late, the result of a mix-up about where it was being held. What I didn't know was that my best friend had made the exact same mistake. We arrived together, late and lost, and from that day we were inseparable. One of those coincidences you can only see in hindsight as something that was always going to happen.

In that first class I got into a fighting stance — elbows up, hands close to my face — convinced we were about to be thrown into sparring. My surprise: yoi, the ready position, has your hands down, at rest. The first thing we learned wasn't how to defend ourselves but where the punch comes from. The tsuki starts from the hip, follows a precise trajectory, and rotates just before impact so the force concentrates into the two knuckles of the index and middle finger. After every set of punches we did something called kiai — which at first glance looks like a shout, and in a way it is, but it comes from somewhere else entirely.

First Steps

The first techniques you learn aren't the flashiest, but they're the foundation of everything that follows. You start with blocks: age uke, a rising block where the forearm sweeps upward to deflect an attack to the head; soto ude uke, where the forearm sweeps inward from the outside to protect the torso; and gedan barai, a downward sweeping block that redirects low attacks out to the side. Three movements, three angles — the body starting to learn how to respond.

Then the strikes. Tsuki is the basic punch, with hip rotation and a wrist twist at the moment of impact. Gyaku tsuki is the reverse punch — it comes from the rear hand and carries the full weight of the body behind it. Choku zuki is more direct, without the hip rotation, shorter and more precise. And mae geri: the front kick, which starts by pulling the knee up, extends the leg outward, and strikes with the koshi — the ball of the foot.

What nobody tells you before you start is what the stances will do to you. Zenkutsu dachi, the long front stance with the weight loaded forward; kokutsu dachi, with most of the weight on the rear leg; and kiba dachi, the horse stance — feet wide, knees pushed out, back straight, as low as you can hold it. You can be in decent shape, play sports, train regularly — and none of that prepares those specific muscles for this specific demand. The next morning, they remind you they exist.

My First Exam

Six months of training, a lean body with not much strength or endurance — frail, if we're being honest. But those six months had put it to the test in ways nothing else had: the low stances that burned, the strikes repeated until the arm had nothing left, the endurance that builds class by class almost without you noticing. And then exam day arrived. White belt to pre-yellow. Not the most impressive rank in the world, but to me it was everything. I was trembling.

The format was kihon: the instructor calls out a technique — "punch to the face, advance three times, kiai on the last one" — and you execute. No improvisation, no excuses. The same techniques we'd practiced hundreds of times with our partners, the same attack and defense drills run by the clock. In that moment the body does what it knows or it doesn't.

Then we reached the kata. Taikyoku Shodan — the first kata, the most basic one, the one we'd repeated until it should have been automatic. Somewhere along the sequence I make a mistake. I get nervous, lose the rhythm for a beat. But not the drive. I finish.

I sat down in my spot and the noise started. I definitely ruined it. I probably failed. I must have blown it. A flood of "you can't," "you messed up," "it wasn't enough." The body had already stopped fighting, but the mind kept going — and it was the worst opponent I'd faced up to that point.

I watched the rest of my classmates take their exams. They went through the list. Any moment now they were going to call my name and tell me to repeat it. And then they did call my name. That second where everything stops — the air, the time, the thoughts — and I heard: promotion. I had passed with a high mark. Not just approved: promoted, which meant I was allowed to test again sooner, to go for the next belt — yellow.

The Big Leap, and a Reality Check to the Face

Over the following months I moved through yellow, orange, and green. Training became about finding every class I could get into: arriving early, staying a little longer, running out of one thing to catch even fifteen minutes of practice, drilling at home when possible. It wasn't easy — but the mind plays tricks on you when you advance quickly. You start believing you're good. A surge of confidence, of certainty, and you start moving differently, talking differently, brushing up against the opposite of the humility karate tries to teach you.

I remember that day clearly, more than a decade later. A lower-ranked classmate made a comment: that belts don't really matter, that there's not much difference if someone knows how to throw a good punch. And to a point he's right — and he's not. Both things are true and contradictory, I know, but it needs to be unpacked.

A good punch can put you in the hospital at any moment: hit the right spot, or push someone off balance so they fall and crack the back of their head. That has to be in your awareness. But karate isn't about throwing a good punch or knowing how to fight — those are the consequence of training, of forming yourself, of discipline. The difference between a white belt's punch and a yellow belt's, three ranks of progress, probably isn't dramatic, unless the person has exceptional strength. A beginner tends to have roughness, disconnection from the body, details that training gradually smooths out. So the claim that "belts don't matter much and a good punch is a good punch" holds some truth. But where are the principles? The discipline? The care you're supposed to have with hard strikes? The respect for your senpais and your kohais? That's where those claims fall apart.

And then came the ending. I said: let's spar — you know how to hit, I'm more advanced, let's see. We started. He was good at slipping punches. And then at some point I felt my nose go numb and my eyes wanting to water. He'd landed a good one. In that instant, everything I'd just explained stopped making sense to me. Someone with a lower rank had beaten me in a match. It wasn't a fight to the death — it was sparring — but it carried weight. I felt that in my mentality, not just in my nose.

That's where I learned something. In theory I was more advanced — and I was — but there were things I still wasn't skilled at. I needed to train more. That much was clear. Because that wasn't the only time: in different situations I ended up taking more than one punch to the face. Not from underestimating whoever was in front of me, but from not expecting those punches. There's an important difference between the two.

Obsession Beats Talent

A large part of my journey through martial arts was defined by the time I put in — from the beginning all the way to the peak of training. I wasn't skilled, or strong, or especially resistant physically. Many exercises, coordination drills, and techniques like the mawashi geri — the roundhouse kick — were genuinely difficult for me. I fell, I stumbled, and things would get a little lighter over time. But there came a point where my endurance, my speed, and my ability to fight just weren't enough. In matches where I was supposed to have more of a presence, I didn't.

That's when my mind settled on one answer: train without stopping until I achieved one thing — becoming fast enough, agile enough, and strong enough to hold my own in a fight, and one day to defend someone who needed it. I started training day and night. The goal was to take as many classes as possible, reinforce at home, and weekends became Spartan sessions — four and a half hours without rest, go home, keep going.

Karate doesn't give you bulk, but it shapes the muscles in a way that's hard to explain until you see it. The arms changed. The legs looked different. Something across the whole body shifted quietly but visibly. My free time stopped existing as such — I gave it to training, because it had become an immense passion. It wasn't obligation. It was the only thing I wanted to do.

In the process, the comments always came. That's useless. Why train so much? Mockery from people who didn't understand — and didn't care to — what the point of a martial art is. People with more experience trying to shrink your progress, as if the hours you'd put in could be dismissed or bought. Or the classic: all that training, and anyone could still beat you.

All of it became fuel. Not to prove anything to anyone else — but to prove something to myself. I'd already passed the tests at the beginning. Now came the most important one: how far could I push myself? Where was the limit?

The Return and the Flash

There was a pause of months — I don't remember exactly how long. What I know is that one day there was a different kind of class, and when I arrived they were picking pairs for a 2v2. The sensei turned and chose two higher-ranked belts, an orange belt, and me — brown belt, third kyu. Like the protagonist who disappeared to train in the mountains and came back.

The match was controlled: mark the strike with intention, don't hurt your partner. In the first round I went after my opponent quickly and marked him, but during the exchange he stepped back and I lost sight of the other one. He took advantage and marked me from behind. We'd lost — my partner too.

In the second round I took the initiative — attacked and pulled back. When one of the opponents went for my partner I intercepted him and marked him in the abdomen. When the other one closed in I defended and marked him as well.

In the third round the opponent who'd gone for my partner changed direction so they could both come at me. And there, the body reacted. I defended, my fist was going toward one man's face while my leg was rising to mark the other's — cover shot, I'd say. And for the first time I felt that spark: the body reacts, the mind goes quiet. Almost automatic. You stop thinking. That's a very high level to reach — but in that moment it was a flash of it, and that was enough.

Over time I became a reference. A senpai. Someone the newer students could look at and say the rank had been earned — not given, but written in the hours.

Kuro Obi

Kuro Obi — from Japanese, black belt. Often mistaken as the end of the road in martial arts, or as the only real goal when someone starts out. And while going from white to black takes several years — years during which many quit, some return, and some never come back — the truth is that the black belt isn't the destination. It's the beginning of real karate.

It's the point where the fundamentals are solid and the refinement of those techniques learned in the early years can finally begin in earnest. Everything before it was building the vocabulary. The black belt is when you start speaking the language.

The Last Colored Step

Getting to brown belt first degree had been hard. You pass through a lot of thoughts, a lot of fatigue, and a kind of strengthening that isn't always visible from the outside. It was the last step in terms of color — what came next had only one name: Kuro Obi.

The preparation had started long before, but there were obstacles along the way. Two months before the exam, two senseis pushed me past the limits I thought I had. Repeating a kata until something concrete changed — not one more repetition, but a visible shift. Training several classes back to back. And changing the approach: stop retreating to defend, and start thinking in different movements to attack. That line where a defense becomes an attack and an attack is, in reality, a defense.

It's inevitable that you break somewhere along the way. You doubt. Because there's a difference between pushing yourself without reaching your limit, and arriving at a limit that doesn't seem to give — a wall, a barrier that won't move. But with the help of those two senseis, I made it to the exam.

The exam consisted of basics — but evaluated with a far more demanding eye than any previous test. It was no longer about a coordinated, memorized movement. What was being assessed was conscious movement: which muscle coordinates what, how the hip drives a forward strike or pulls back into a defense. The visible mechanics, not just the outcome.

An advanced kata with rhythm, breathing, and kime — that moment of full contraction and focus at the point of impact — assessed with attention to every detail. And a sparring match where they put someone in front of me who would have taken my head off the moment I lost focus. Control was everything. I managed to shut down his uncontrolled strikes with impeccable defense, and my own landed precise and in check.

When the results came I could briefly recall that first exam, years earlier — sitting in my spot, thinking only about how I'd failed, how I hadn't been enough. This time I was nervous — but happy with what I'd done on the tatami. Of course I wanted to pass. But I'd already proven something to myself, and that was something no one could take away.

They called my name. I stood up. And they said: Shodan.

The Fight You Avoid Is the One You Win

Karate gives you multiple tools that at first seem purely physical: endurance, strength, speed, techniques, strikes, takedowns, kicks. But there are equally important things — discipline, self-control, clarity — and the art of not fighting is, ironically, the fight you win.

Today you can have a conflict with someone you don't know. Things escalate fast and can turn physical, and you never know what's going on in the other person's mind — whether they have a knife, a weapon, or simply nothing to lose. Most conflicts will always be resolved with words. But there are moments in life where you will inevitably have to use your hands to defend yourself — or, more importantly, to defend someone else.

I remember a time when three men were trying to intercept me. I noticed in time, and instead of confronting them I made the smartest move: I ran. I removed myself from the situation. There was another time when someone tried to hit me in the head — by pure reaction I blocked it and my fist landed a light strike to his ribs. Enough to send the message that I could defend myself. Nothing more happened. And in another situation, in a place that suddenly went dark, someone approached very fast. My reaction of stepping into a guard stance stopped him completely.

The Strongest Protect Others

Protecting yourself, your integrity, your survival instinct — those can carry you through critical moments on adrenaline alone. That's almost automatic; the body does it. But the purpose of the martial art is always defense. Not attack, not demonstration: defense.

Having in your hands the decision to prevent someone from getting hurt. The ability to de-escalate a situation before it becomes a conflict. And as a last resort — when words are gone and there's no other way out — using your hands and becoming the wall that protects others.

Here's the thing they don't put on the wall in most dojos, but it's the truth behind all of it: the strong protect themselves. That's the baseline. But the strongest protect other people. That's not a metaphor. The whole point of building this capability — physical, mental, the discipline of years — is to be useful to someone who needs it. To stand between someone vulnerable and something that wants to harm them. To make the world slightly safer by your presence in it.

I've carried that idea since I was fifteen, and it's only gotten more true with time. Strength without purpose is just weight. But strength in service of others — that's what karate pointed me toward, even when I didn't have the words for it yet.