30th Oct 2007
“Moving to Adult Class” by Catherine White
Last April, when I turned fourteen, a lot of people at the dojo started asking me when I was going to start adult classes. To be honest I had not really given it much thought. To me aikido was just an activity I went to one or twice a week, trained, and had a good time.
When I thought of the adult program I pictured a lot of tall, scary people who were way older than me. I did not know if I was ready, but I went to my first adult class expecting to find a bunch of black belts who wanted to hurt me, instead I met Erickson Sensei. I was still really scared to train with adults, I just wanted to hide and observe from the mat while other people helped Sensei demonstrate. Except, for the very first technique Sensei looked over at me and said, “Can you do breakfall?”
I replied, “Yes Sensei,” and a chill ran down my spine, I was terrified, was she going to throw me really hard? As soon as she started to demonstrate I felt fine, did my breakfalls, and felt great, until I realized that soon I would have to do this technique on a bunch of older people. I didn’t know how they would react to me; I mean I was only fourteen, a kid. I thought that they would not listen to me and that they would dislike me very much.
I was paired with a group of white belts and suddenly wished I was not a brown belt. I thought it would be so awkward helping these adults; I did not want them to feel disrespected. Then I realized that they wanted to be helped, and my age was not a factor at all, I was an adult in an adult class.
The kids program was a great place to start and develop my skills in a very considerate learning environment. I made a lot of good friends over the years and as I got older learned how to work with small children. I am really glad I moved into the adults program though, because it forced me to try my hardest and to really improve my skills. I was pretty good in the kids program, but I now hope to really improve my technique, learn more about the dojo, and help out much more often.
Catherine White is a 2.5 kyu student at Tenshinkan dojo in Chicago, IL.
