From Brown Belt to Red Belt

I found the following in my Drafts folder from this past January:


I’ve been a student of Krav Maga since July 2019, six months after my son started karate. I’ve attended class consistently for a year and a half, even signing on to Zoom classes during the pandemic.

I’m much more flexible than I was at the beginning, especially in the hips — I’m this close to doing the side splits, and the last time I could do the splits was in ballet class when I was seven. From a self-defense perspective, I feel like I’m more likely to react appropriately to a physical threat than I was, considering that my fight-flight-freeze instinct used to be entirely to freeze.

I’ve been showing up, putting in the work a couple times a week, and paying for me and my son’s class memberships and gear purchases and belt testing fees. I’ve been having fun and learning stuff and getting tired and sweaty. I feel like this is all worthwhile.

But I don’t feel like I should be a brown belt.

I keep getting stuck on the fact that I don’t have the requisite 75 push-ups in me. Never have. I do my best, and I modify as needed to keep up in class… but if they were being totally strict about the fitness portion of the belt tests, no way would I have passed.

The rhythm of fighting also doesn’t come naturally to me. The few times I’ve gotten to try sparring, I’ve ended up just covering my face with my gloves and trying not to get hit in the nose. Or in the gut, while I’m covering my face. (Thanks for that, Landon!) Whenever we learn a new strike set that involves a back-and-forth of punching and ducking and such, I can memorize the steps, but it takes several rounds before I really feel like I get it. When we’re grappling, I don’t have a sense of where I am versus where my opponent is, and what exactly I’m supposed to be accomplishing.

Could be that I’m just prone to Impostor Syndrome, and since I actually feel secure in my career as a developer of data dashboards and reports, my brain has transferred my self-doubt to Krav Maga, instead. Could be that I have a pre-conceived idea of who or what a brown belt is “supposed” to be like, and overweight middle-aged mom is definitely not in that paradigm.


Fast-forward to yesterday, when I received my red belt (after intentionally skipping the last round of testing in March).

I partnered up with one of the white belts — us ladies like to stick together — and helped her understand the moves and the concepts. Mr. Turner still corrected my form every now and then when he’d check on us, and I did wonder if I had picked the white belt as my partner so I could kind of ease into class and not go all-out.

Eventually, he had us switching partners, and I went all-out with the other intermediate and advanced students. I felt pretty secure in the technique, especially when Mr. Turner pointed out to the class that there was one aspect that only I was doing right. (Him: “There’s one thing I want to point out to you all, and the only one doing this is Diana!” Me: “…Is that good or bad?”)

There’s a whole range of ages and shapes and abilities in the adult Krav class, and this might be the first physical activity where I don’t feel like I stand out for all the wrong reasons. Got bad knees? There’s someone else with that. Need to stop and catch your breath? There’s someone else doing that, too. Feeling like your workout top is a little unflattering around the midsection? Oh, please — it’s not a fashion show. It’s even OK to take a breather if you’re feeling woozy — no one’s going to judge.

I’m a red belt in Krav Maga. I still expect that I’d get my butt handed to me if I got in an honest-to-god fight with an attacker, but at least I’d have the reflexes to try to hold my own, instead of freezing up like I would have two years ago.

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