Escalation

If you had asked me a year ago what I saw myself doing in a year, I’m pretty sure “lying on a mat in the basement of a dojo in South Korea while a man pummels me in the stomach with a log” would probably be pretty low on the list. As it turns out, that’s just about precisely what I’m doing now. You know, in between the teaching and the adjustment to a new culture.

Ok, it’s not really a log; it’s a four-inch diameter, three-foot long cylindrical cut of smoothly sanded wood, but as I haven’t learned it’s technical name, “log” will have to suffice.

In one of my first weekends here, I had the good fortune of being introduced to Kristian, a friend of many of the teachers at my hagwon. Kristian is a Swedish-born engineer who hails from Spain, a world traveler whose current occupation has him working at a prominent firm in Seoul. He is a black belt in Kyokushin kaikan, a form of full-contact karate.

Kristian didn’t have too much trouble in convincing me to visit the local dojo a few times to see if I liked Kyokushin. It happened in the span of a five minute conversation. The setting: a big group of the teachers at my school was celebrating the departure of a teacher by taking a trip to sample the Seoul nightlife. In the early hours of the morning, we settle at a geology-inspired hookah bar in a tucked-away alley; we sit cross-legged in small artificial caves illuminated by neon green lights. The pitch: Kristian asked if I ever considered training in a martial art. I told him I was interested, that I figured Taekwondo or Hapkido seemed logical choices because they are both Korean martial arts. Kristian convinced me to try out Kyokushin, claiming it would be easier to pursue in Korea as a foreigner than either of the aforementioned Korean martial arts. And on top of that, there was actually another teacher at my school who was actually training at the Kyokushin dojo at the time. I am sold.

Having had no previous formal training in any martial art whatsoever, there’s a lot of basic things I have to learn during my first several weeks at the dojo. There’s the usual things like learning how to fold a dogi, the uniform of the Kyokushin practitioner; the rules of etiquette in a dojo; the basics of how to throw and take a punch.

And all of that learning is happening—gradually. But on the first day, Kristian let me spar with him, throwing punches and kicks at his body for a good twenty minutes. It was invigorating. It was also incredibly refreshing; swayed by a popular sentiment that currently deems any form of fighting that is not Brazilian Jiu-itsu or Muay Thai or another similarly “practical” martial art is inferior, I assumed that Kyokushin might be rooted in a lot of swinging at air, might not challenge me as strenuously as I had hoped.

I knew I had assumed wrong when I heard Kristian utter a word I recognized: kumite.

Kumite is sparring. It is where your training is put into practice. And for Kyokushin, that training mostly revolves around the study of how best to strike a standing opponent and bring that opponent to the ground.

What does that mean? Watching a fight is really the best way to illustrate the intensity of the martial art:

As you can see, there’s lots of pretty intense stuff to keep anyone’s interest. Kyokushin is a strike- and endurance-based martial art; the goal is to beat your opponent until he (or she; there’s a yellow belt at my dojo who has some wicked backspin kicks) falls to the mat. You’ll notice that many of the fights in the video don’t last too long; this is primarily due to one detail I haven’t mentioned yet: kicks to the head are legal.

Kicks to the head. Are legal.

Awesome.

Don’t get me wrong, there’s a really interesting mental and philosophical side to martial arts I’m discovering as well, but for now, I’m still overcome by one thing: kicks to the head. Well, two things, really: kicks to the head, and the pain of being struck repeatedly in the stomach and chest with a log by the master of the dojo last Friday, a pain that made me think I had suffered internal organ damage when I walked into my classroom on Saturday and realized I was short of breath and dizzy.

Lesson learned: don’t get pummeled for the first time in your life on a Friday and then have a night out on the town until 6 in the morning. The combination of dehydration, exhaustion, and gold ole’ fashioned pain is a bit overwhelming.