Training in the Cold

I got up this morning and followed my normal ritual, put the dogs out, feed the dogs, and then head out to the dojo for my daily training.  This morning when I went outside it was cold, yesterday it was chilly, but today when I went into the dojo, the thermostat said it was 50 degrees.

As I slipped my shoes off and stepped onto the cold mat, I had a few flash backs of training in my father’s dojo, over the years.  I remembered when we trained in our home dojo in the 1970s, it was all warm and cozy and we only trained outside in the summer, when we moved over to the YMCA in the 1980s, we were in a basement that was cool but not bad, it was those days in the middle of winter that he would look at everybody and say, ok take off and run around the block and come back.  People would stop to put on their shoes and he would yell, “No one told you to put your shoe’s on, move!”  Running barefoot in the snow builds character.  I also recall when we moved out of the YMCA and opened the first stand alone Marion dojo, we spent months in the winter working on it and getting it ready to open. We had the grand opening in January; the first few classes were ok and then something went wrong with the furnace, the water froze under the building.  My father continued to teach classes, everyday. It was cold, so cold. I remember one of the students asking if he could bring in some kerosene heaters and if we could wear socks, my father replied, I suppose if you want to be a bunch of pussies.  So we continued training in the cold with only our own body heat, and sweat from hundreds of repetitions to warm up the dojo. (It is amazing that we were young and no one got sick), and yes we would run laps barefoot around the parking lot.

Like a good student, I never asked my father questions, just did what I was told, but after class one day, when everyone had left, I asked him why he was training us in the cold, he looked at me and said, “Sometimes you must train yourself and your body in extreme conditions, and outside of your comfort zone. You can not always train in a warm or cool dojo, sometimes you must train in extreme hot and extreme cold, out in the rain or snow, in nature, you do not know where you maybe when you are called upon or when you maybe in need of your skills.”

He eventually fixed the furnace, and when summer rolled around we trained without the air conditioner on and that same year, we moved into the dojo to live, training took on a whole different meaning, but that is a post for another time………. 

Suffice it to say that even though it is my dojo and I control when the heat gets turned on, today I trained in the cold and felt good about it!