🔥 Another Milestone for KO Fight Studio! 🔥

Let’s drop a truth bomb first. We all hate our bosses. Or our teachers. Or that person who is hanging out with our crushes. The number of times you wanted to give them a beatdown is, way too many. I mean yes outside we all want to say socially acceptable stuff and stay polite on the outside but deep down, moments of rage surface. (Should you hit them in real life? NO! You should always have that self-control!)

But….

What if….

You CHANNEL that rage into something good?

Imagine, it’s a Thursday night, and life has been less than kind to you this past week. Maybe that toxic senior at the office gave you unnecessary ‘pera’. Or that teacher who hold grudges shot your grade down out of spite. You have bottled up rage and hatred.  

I say you get a chance to unleash a flurry of kicks and punches and relieve all that stress.

On a punching bag. Or on the training floor.

Or maybe you have never done anything sporty in your whole life, always lived your life as a couch potato. But deep inside man, the fire always burned. You always wanted to try a full contact sport and feel that adrenaline rush.

Or maybe you watched Karate Kid/Cobra Kai/Enter the Dragon and want to emanate into that?

Welcome to Kyokushin Karate. Well, not welcome, unless you instill the philosophy of perpetual improvement, discipline, and hard training. Because Kyokushin is not about the stuff that I mentioned upwards. Those can be your motivation, other than the usual self-defense and what not. But once you enter the fray, it is never about those negative energy but the utter self-control to contain all of it. It’s about mastering yourself and embodying control.

Let me share my story-well, the beginning of it, since I have a long way to go and don’t want this small tenure to be my whole ‘story’ per se.

I wanted to join Karate earlier back in 2021, but work schedules got in the way. The itch to get into something physical stayed with me. My little niece started Kyokushin in KO Fight Studio this year, which prompted me to scrape the rust off that little forgotten dream of bringing Cobra Kai to a reality. The other option was gym, and while the thought of being a buffed steroid dude sounded tempting (kidding, of course), I embraced my darker side-punching and kicking all the negative energy in the training ground or the punching bag.  If I was going to join something, why not go for the best? The KO Fight Studio is registered under the World Karate Organization (WKO) which has branches in 101 countries and KO Fight Studio is the authorized branch in Bangladesh.

So I went, full of doubts, since the last time I played football was back in college and I am not athletic. But our dear Shihan Abdullah, God bless him, relieved this predicament of my mind and eased me into it. He, with his calm wisdom, put me at ease and said something, which I always try to follow, “Be honest to yourself with the efforts.”

Thus began my training. I thought I am super awesome with punches and kicks. Well, after joining, I learnt there’s a grammar to it as well! Turns out, NO, Galib, you are not Batman or some Hollywood hero. That was a hard truth to swallow, innit? (Although you guys haven’t seen me and batman together, so……. hint hint!!)

Back to Kyokushin. It was fun initially, no cap. Then, like I said, the discipline and hard training sets in. I missed classes sometimes—because, you know, adulthood. It takes some special self-motivation to keep showing up at the dojo after work or on weekend. This is where it gets interesting. The time management is brutal, juggling between office, family, studies, personal stuff, injuries, procrastination etc. Like Coldplay sang, “Nobody said it was easy, no one ever said it would be this hard!” But hey, the show must go on. You embrace the lifestyle. You make it a part of you because maybe some part of you became a masochist? Nah, you don’t do it because you have to—you do it because you love it. It doesn’t feel like a chore for you.

With time, there came the belt test. August 31^st, 2024. My first belt test. I was super excited and super nervous. This is my first time in testing myself in something physically exerting! Also super stressed since I caught fever just 3 days before the test! I talked with the Senpais for advice. They were chilled, but I was nervous! I couldn’t sleep the night before, my mind running through the katas, eido and kihon! Popped a paracetamol next morning to keep the fever in check after waking up.

The dojo was packed with people from both Gulshan and Dhanmondi. It started with the attendance, then warm up, the zen line, explanations, formal stretches, then the dreaded fitness test. And that was just the beginning! Then came skipping and jumping, ending with knuckle push-ups-a series of brutal challenges. Then came the-Hand stands. Never ever ever (yes the superlatives are required) in my life had I imagined that I, Galib Nakib Rahman, with my heavy body, would pull off a handstand. But I did it! That boosted my confidence. Loved the jump squats and the eido and kihon keikos! There was punching bag, where you could unleash anything on the poor bag. By that point, I was a sweaty mess, drained of my last ounce of energy—feeling dizzy and nauseous, head feeling heavy.

Shit. I realized, my fever kicked in, the paracetamol has worn off. I did not have another one.

I thought I would talk to the Senpais or Shihan about it, but whether it was my fever or was it the game face, they seemed different-like they were in invigilator mode.

Remember the song, Flora Cash sang,

“Well, you look like yourself, But you’re somebody else, Only it ain’t on the surface

Well, you talk like yourself, No, I hear someone else though, Now you’re making me nervous”

Y’all remember Shihan? Normally he is a pookie (like Dr. Yunus, remember the pookie trend?) with always very caring and loving while teaching, but on that day, I swear it was not the Shihan that I knew! Here’s a plot twist. Even all the chilled, caring Senpais seemed….distant. They were strict- Not in a mean way, but in a ‘test day’ way! As they should be. Because, for the umpteenth time, Kyokushin IS about the discipline. It is about the way of the warrior. Obviously, everyone should have that no mercy attitude with honor.

Because during lunchtime, the said “cold unknown” Senpais were back to their usual selves! After lunch were two sessions. First there was breaking- Wooden planks. If you had told me 8 months ago, I’d break a wooden plank in one hit, I wouldn’t have believed you. I broke three in total! Later I saw in the video, after breaking the first plank, I was looking at my hand in disbelief! (Years later maybe I will laugh at this thinking this is easy peasy, but for now, it is really big!)

Then came the most exciting part of the test, the most nerve wrecking one- Kumite or fights. You have to fight senior belts, like, actual fights. Now you know why it is called full contact sports. There are dos and don’ts. There are rules and techniques, but it’s a real fight. But the main thing is, unleashing on a punching bag is something but fighting a human being, (not like those school fights where you have a reason or a personal clash or something) out of nowhere, right from the word go, while defending yourself, man this is crazy tough. But, it is what it is. An amazing thing is that, during the test you don’t feel the pain initially. I mean you do but not fully. I kinda forgot I had fever. Maybe because of adrenaline or the nerves. The real pain kicks in AFTER the test.

Suddenly.

EVERYWHERE! (Especially during the nighttime, but that’s a different story)

After the test, we had the grading dinner, where you get to chill with Shihan, Sensei, Senpais and Kohais.

There you go, story of my first belt test. Like the trend these days, I wish I could say, despite being a white belt, that I identify as a black belt, but kidding apart, this was amazing. And this is coming from a non-sporty, sedentary, burnt-out guy, who never thought he’d enjoy something like this. Will I pass and get my first colored belt? Only time will tell. But hey, like Shihan said, I had been honest to my efforts in this entire journey. Again, I don’t want to call it a journey, this is just the beginning. Won’t you?

[The writer is an engineer turned finance and ESG enthusiast, trying to drink gulps from the immensely stimulating ocean of finance/economics/ESG and move to greener pastures to shift from his boring job in the capital market. Tell him how he can do that (or how he can excel in Kyokushin) at 01947599721 or galibnakibrahman@gmail.com]