Passions For Life
I spent over twenty years in active martial arts competition and now in my middle age years, I no longer have the same desire to compete like I did when I was younger. And of course, my body has changed over the years too. While I’m still physically fit, I’m not as fast nor do I heal as quickly from injuries anymore.
However, I have found ways to keep doing martial arts in some ways during my post competition years. It’s always been my intention to keep doing martial arts for life and in this blog post, I’ll share how I’m doing this even after retiring from active competition as an example of how one can continue to do passions for life, even if you passions were activities that are more suited for younger folks.
Many former martial arts competitors end up teaching and coaching. I did not want to go to this common route since I did not want to commit to a martial arts school long term. I didn’t even want to teach part time say at a community centre.
Effective Self Defense Seminar
Instead, I wanted to give my time to teach general self defense seminars to those who really want to learn. So I make my Effective Self Defense seminar available to groups and organizations (as well as to my own social group) and teach for free as a community service. This gives me a sense of doing something good for the community, ie., my version of giving back to the community.
I also produced an instructional DVD called Effective Self Defense With Karate World Champion Clint Cora which is available online to everyone worldwide at both my website as well as through Amazon – just click on the link for more details. This DVD is actually now provided to participants of my live seminar.
So any groups or organizations who are interested in hosting my seminar can see more details at my page for Effective Self Defense Training.
Total Body Stretch Class
One element that I have retained from my martial arts training is the stretching and I have incorporated all the stretches that I did during my competition years into a class called Total Body Stretch. I teach this class a few times per year to my social group. Even yoga instructors who have taken my class have been impressed by the flexibility exercises I put participants through. Participants in Total Body Stretch get to try out all the flexibility exercises and stretching that I did when I was competing (and continue to do today). Some folks have called this class the ‘moan and groan’ class since I get people to do many stretches that likely have never done before. Most fitness professionals will not have been exposed to many of my stretches as well since flexibility training is not a big component of overall fitness but in my opinion, it should be.
Martial Arts At Home
I still train in martial arts at home although a little less frequent at once or twice per week rather than every day when I was still competing. I also do not train at the same high intensity as I did during competition years too. So although my current skills might not be at competition level, at least I no longer get any injuries from martial arts at my current lower intensity training.
My current objective for my home martial arts training is to retain the competition forms, both empty hand and martial arts weaponry, so that I can easily still perform them at a show or demonstration if asked to. And since I still enjoy doing these forms very much, I do use them as part of my overall fitness activities. This sure beats the boredom of doing just general gym fitness workouts in my opinion.
In addition to my martial arts forms, I’ll also do a bit of kickboxing drills as well as self defense drills to maintain some skills. I no longer condition my hands for board breaking but I would like to acquire either a heavy bag or body target to do some sort of hitting, again, just to maintain some skills of actually being able to execute some martial arts strikes with some impact.
Combination With Music Videos
As another outlet in terms of entertainment, I would also like to combine a bit of martial arts into future music videos I’ll produce. This will combine two of my favourite passions in life, martial arts and music. I already shot one such video which was introduced in a separate blog post about my Joe Satriani inspired music video.
So with these various activities – self defense seminars, stretch classes, home training and music videos – I’m finding that I’m able to keep my interest and motivation relatively intact in martial arts even after competition retirement. I’m projecting that I will be able to do martial arts for life in some form even at a lower intensity level compared to when I was an active competitor by doing these kinds of activities.
I hope that this will also demonstrate that everyone out there can continue on with their favourite passions in life in some form or another even if these were activities were when they were younger. It is still possible to find ways to keep involved for life even if not at a high level or intensity and find enjoyment with them.
I know that for myself, I feel great when I can still do the same passions I fell in love with so many years ago even if I do them differently these days. Hope everyone else can do the same too.
