To Win, I Had to Walk

Three and a half years into it, I quit my kung fu practice.

I am not the kind of person you might expect to be doing kung fu. In truth, I started because I was 44, out of shape, putting on my obligatory middle-age 5 lbs per year, and we had the kids in class, so I figured: why not get a workout while I'm here anyway?

I loved so much about what I got out of it. An eclectic community of mostly middle-aged moms, each wonderful and tough in her own right: one toughing it out in tech, another just became the first ever female refinery chief for a major oil company. A number of committed teachers and a variety of teaching styles. A way to get in a good workout without it feeling like the monotony of a treadmill. A commitment to excellent and to actual achievement: there was no advancement just for showing up.

I also discovered the dark side of that no advancement for just showing up: rigidness in adherence to their system. I repeated injured my knee in kung fu, initially tearing the meniscus of my right knee and losing a significant amount of cartilage while I "toughed it out" for six months. I then subsequently re-injured it twice: both times when I was in an extended testing period for my next belt. This testing period required us to "go all out" in every class for as long as six months (yes, they made someone test for six months) in order to move on to a new rank, and get to start practicing new material.

The last time, I felt myself getting injured early in the testing process and sent an email begging for help. I explained how I saw a pattern... how "going all out" for weeks and months was not going to work. I needed them to work with me to keep me safe. The answer was their usual, "everyone's journey is unique" and "so-and-so just got their brown belt with a knee injury." They would not even talk about adjustments.

Three weeks later, I left class when I could literally no longer stand on my knee. One MRI later, in addition to inflamed tendinitis, I had an MCL sprain and bone bruising.

After that, I still tried to return. After two and a half months of rehab, I tried to come back. After a week, I realized I just couldn't keep doing this to myself. I sent an email that day telling them I was done and why.

Why Is It So hard to Quit?

Looking back, I'm rather amazed how long I hung on. I'm a coach, after all. On the self-awareness scale, I rate myself pretty high. So what happened that kept me emotionally tied to a system that was literally hurting me?

In any system of martial arts, I am inclined to think there's at least a hint of cultishness. In the case of the system I was in, that culture was particularly strong: we only addressed each other by title and last name, and I'm not sure in all my years there I ever heard a black belt admit they were wrong. In the instructor classes (I was an instructor-trainee), there was a slavish commitment to learning all the names of every strike and the tiniest details of every technique so as to never have to ask or look something up. Why such perfectionism? In retrospect, it was because they were instilling a culture of "the teacher is always right."

While I was in the midst of all of this, I recognized these things, but I did not name them or stop and consider what they meant for me. I was "hooked" into thinking that all of the challenges in front of me were "good" challenges, things I needed to overcome on my own. Some of them were! There were absolutely elements of grit and overcoming emotional hurdles that were helpful to me.

What is was harder to see when in it was which were healthy challenges and which were absolutely not. And to recognize the impact of their inflexibility to separating out those two things and dealing with them.

This experience would be not worth a lot if I didn't learn from it.

What I Learned Bullet 1: Start with Why

I am trying out new martial arts schools, because there's much I miss about my practice, and working with a personal trainer. And for each school or instructor I engage with, I am writing 1-3 bullet points of my ultimate goals and what's important along the way. Here's what I have got for my work with my personal trainer:

1. Goals: Michelle Obama arms, 10 real pushups (in a row)
2. Process: Enjoy myself and push myself. I want both joy and discomfort in working out.

At any time, I can check in: how am I doing on achieving the goals? How is the process? What, if anything, is getting in the way?

What I Learned Bullet 2: Schedule Retrospection

This is one of my favorite concepts of agile software development: the ritual of stopping and zooming out and evaluating what is working and what isn't. Having those "why" goals makes this so much easier: it gives me something to benchmark against.

So, on my calendar at two month intervals, I have check-ins with myself on all my projects and key relationships.

What I Learned Bullet 3: It's Not Just Me

When I was struggling with the answers and attitudes I was getting from my kung fu black belt instructors, what I did was allow them to be right and me to be wrong. I decided I needed to be better. I took it personally.

And... when something is happening to me, one thing I can count on is that others are experiencing it, too. Sometimes--as in this case--far, far worse. After I quit, someone I respect and like immensely reached out to me with a clear and highly credible story of how they were harmed. Their story is theirs and not mine to tell. What's important here is that I remember that when I am experiencing something that's fundamentally bothering me, chances are it's bothering others too. Sometimes much, much worse.

What Else

I have a friend--an incredibly smart and brave woman--who is in a community that is very deeply important to her, led by an elder who is a white man. In a retreat, he said something that seriously bothered her.

After a lot of wrestling with herself, she chose to speak up to him, in as mature a manner as she could, and to call him out on his words and explain the impact they had on her. She knew that to do this, she risked dismissal and social exclusion from a group that had become part of her very identity. By speaking up, she would risk her place in the group.

As I (certainly imperfectly) recall, she found what felt like the best moment, and spoke up and shared with him what he had said, and the impact it had on her. And there was a pause, and a chuckle, and he said "well, it seems I still have a lot to learn, don't I?"

She was brave, she was vulnerable, and she did the right thing. And she grew, as, I imagine, did every person who was in the room. Because the leader was open to hearing her, and to his own growth. They're in it together.

When I choose instructors, it's vital to me that they be open to learning. When I go to martial arts instructors, I trust they will know far, far more than me about martial arts. And it is vital to me that they trust that I am the expert on me, and listen to what I need. And that we can learn and grow from each other.

One of the teachers from whom I have learned the most was benefited the most was my ballet teacher, back in college. He challenged me, he corrected me. He also loved having me in his class. When I posted on social media about what was going on, he shared something that literally made me burst into tears. "You are one of my favorite students ever! You were a great influence on everyone around you and I still talk about you when thinking about my most valuable teaching experiences." What made me value him so much was I did have so much to learn from him. And I also felt deeply seen and valued. And I trusted him to never, ever push me to hurt myself.

I deserve to have instructors who see me, trust me so long as do nothing to breach their trust, and value having me in their class. And so do you.

So I did the right thing by speaking up, and asking for help. And, when they would or could not hear me, I did the right thing by walking away.