SEMPAI SAAD ARSHAD - JUNIOR BLACK BELT

I joined our club when  I was 8 years old in 2015. I decided to try out karate. I joined the club because my friend joined. I had some fun and I was sure that karate would help me in my life. My friend then quit after a few weeks but I decided to keep going. Little did I know I would come to achieve a junior black belt. 

Karate is not like sports or some Yellowknife program for you to stay active. It is a martial art. Something I like about karate is that it helps you in many ways. It can help you mentally physically and spiritually. If you have the right sensei then it can also teach you discipline. Nowadays there is not much discipline being taught.  But karate certainly does! In karate, you have to give all you've got ,and if you don't do that you MIGHT receive correction and sometimes consequences from your sensei!!!

Something I like about my instructors is that they do whatever they can to get us better. They show us what needs to be done, and they help us to make our karate better.

When I was a yellow belt I felt like I wasn't ready and that I didn't know the katas. But then around orange belt, I caught up. I also felt like I didn’t like karate at one point, but my parents didn’t let me quit and they motivated me to keep going.  In 2019 we drove to Whitecourt, Alberta for a tournament. Here in the NWT, we are isolated from a lot of karate so this was my first tournament. It was pretty fun though! We won 15 medals altogether. I won a gold in kumite and a bronze in kata. 

Our club used to be in the Shintani Wado Kai Karate Federation but last year we switched to Wado Karate Association of Canada (Wado Canada).  Wado Canada’s founder, Shihan Greg Reid, is Master Masaru Shintani’s uchi-deshi (right-hand man). We had to implement new ways to do things, like the changes in the katas and learning to focus our blocks, punches and strikes. Switching to Wado Canada was a great decision made by our Sensei Patrick and Sensei Masaya.  We are now learning the true way of Master Shintani's teachings.

I have some goals for karate as well. My goals right now are to improve my flexibility and to perfect my basics. My long term goal is to achieve a full black belt. To be eligible for the black belt you have to be 16 years old. I have around three more years until then and I want to be the best I can before that. But three years can go by pretty fast! It would be a great achievement to get a full black belt!

I am very grateful to have the opportunity to learn karate and making it this far. Getting a red belt is surely not the end of karate though. There are always more things to learn and to improve on. I hope that anyone who reads this benefits from this and doesn't give up. 

Osu

-Saad Arshad