Growing up, many of us have, at one point or another, experienced our parents or guardians taking us to a martial arts space to try a class. Some of us asked our parents and sought them out ourselves; others were brought out of necessity or against our will. Whatever brought us to these traditional martial arts schools (or “dojos,” for those who remember), one thing would always remain true — almost none of us remained there into adulthood or continued practicing.

Between the ages of 11 and 15, I was an avid practitioner of traditional martial arts and wrestled in middle school for a season. As I got older, I grew out of it and eventually got to a point where I didn’t have any interest in martial arts at all.

For kids, sometimes it isn’t even a matter of losing interest; life just tends to get in the way. Parents separate or get new jobs, or you have to move, and learning Karate, Kung Fu or Taekwondo takes a back seat. 

As an adult, it’s usually a conscious choice to come to a martial arts academy and take a class. People start training for a variety of rasons, from wanting to lose weight to wanting to become a professional MMA fighter. However, it’s important to remember one crucial thing: the reason you start might not be the reason you stay. 

Someone in their early twenties might haves aspirations of competing professionally, and they want to train twice a day, five days a week. Over the course of a few months, they start to develop the foundations of their game, work their way up to intermediate classes and eventually sign up for local competitions in both BJJ and amateur Muay Thai smokers. Everything’s headed in the right direction until one day, they get a bad concussion — an unfortunate risk of combat sports — and it forces them to take some time off the mats.

When they return, they find striking to be a little too high-impact, and they decide to stick to BJJ for the time being — as there’s a somewhat smaller risk of getting head trauma. This eventually leads them deeper and deeper into grappling and gradually, they start competing again. One day, when they’re a brown belt, they start teaching and open an academy. 

On the other side of the spectrum you could have someone in their mid-thirties who feels out of shape and understands that a lifestyle change needs to happen. They attend their first class and go home feeling out of breath and a little embarrassed. They think about just quitting and going back to their regular life because it feels comfortable and normal – but they know that’s not the answer.

After a couple months, they start to notice a change in their body. Classes feel a bit easier to come to, and things make more sense. After eight months, they not only look forward to going to class as an escape from the stressors of the outside world, but they’ve developed a new group of friends through the academy as well.

A year and some change in, they decide to compete for the first time (something they thought they would never do) and it goes well enough that they continue to try bigger and bigger competitions. They have become a much stronger, more resilient version of themselves that they never knew could exist – and they have a solid group of friends who care for them and want them to succeed. 

On a much lighter note, take someone who has a family and a regular 9-to-5 job and who’s just looking to have a little fun and get a workout in. They have no aspirations of competing or fighting, but love the atmosphere and community at Easton. Seeing the positive impact, they eventually bring their kids in to train as well, so that they make friends and have something to share as they grow older. 

[Why Martial Arts?]

For me, my return to the mats came at 27. I was over 200 pounds, and I didn’t take my health seriously at all. I tried to go to the gym, lift and workout, but I’d usually take one step forward and two steps back by not staying consistent or sticking to a diet, instead eating and drinking loads of sugar.

When I found Easton in 2015,  my only goal was to lose some weight and get in better shape through Kickboxing classes. I had no real interest in learning Muay Thai, and I definitely didn’t see myself doing BJJ. After coming more and more often, and getting to know the coaches, I began to fall in love with martial arts again. I even started coming to Muay Thai classes and training sometimes 2 – 3 times a day.

A couple years in, I started BJJ at the beginning of 2017 as a new year’s resolution. While it took some getting used to, after I got my second stripe and started rolling, I was hooked. I had no desire to compete and definitely didn’t see myself becoming a coach (let alone teaching kids.) Now, seven years later, I coach both kids and adults full time, and I compete regularly. 

[Easton Open Spring 2024: Competition That Elevates Community]

Comparisons between life and martial arts have been made for almost as long as both have existed—and for good reason. Life often finds a way of throwing us challenges and difficulties without warning. Things that seem simple and straightforward at first reveal themselves to be much deeper and more complicated than we realized.

We often have to endure at least a couple painful failures or hardships that set us back quite a bit and sometimes even make us feel like it’s the end, that we’ll never be the same again.

While I don’t believe martial arts is a magic pill or a cure-all, the voluntary suffering we put ourselves through on the mats every day will prepare us to deal with these things better than almost anything. The reason we start our martial arts journey might be superficial or lack much meaning at all, but the reasons we continue to return can grow far deeper and more profound than we ever expected. 

Moral of the story? Keep showing up. You never know what you might find — you might surprise even yourself! 

[How I Came to Martial Arts: Tale of a Disgruntled Athlete]