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After marriage I trained briefly. We had a new daughter, Jessica and
I had a friend in a Judo club, so I came out. I threw the instructor
eighteen times in a row over the course of several classes and he never managed
to throw me in return. I admit, I was showing off for my wife, but
I decided it wasn't for me, though it was a competition oriented club and
the instructor was at my weight class and was doing well competing on a state
level and trying to gear up for national level competition. For notes
on how I did it, visit Responsive Throwing Seminar.
Instead, I walked with my wife, lifted weights and otherwise lived life.
Then Jessica died. Eleven months later Courtney died.
Eventually, as I started to recover, my wife pushed me to call what
looked like a McDojo (a Kung Fu/Tae Kwon Do studio). Amazingly, they
put me in contact with
Ashley
Gouthro, a Shotokan blackbelt and let us use their club space to train
in the early mornings.
Literally a gentleman and a scholar (his graduate work was impressive), the
studio owner was also a ni-dan in Shotokan. Before long we had added
Kyle
King, then we had Nick Chappas, and suddenly we had a real club. We
would eventually even have a Japanese blackbelt as a part of it.
While I had competed and won in tournaments in both kata and sparring as
a brown belt, I'd not actually tested. With Ashley and Nic bringing instructors
in or travelling to Dallas with us, Kyle and I tested to i-kyu over a period
of a couple years.
It was a good time, a healing time, then Robin died.
On books: go to your library, use interlibrary loan, and you
can order anything. You should never buy a martial arts book until
you've read it twice for free. On Masterclass Judo books,
there are much cheaper places to buy them than Amazon, but it is a great
place to read about them.
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