Courage, what is it?

Courage, what is it? It’s the feeling that causes you question your ability.  Courage is when you take control of a situation even though you don’t know what to do, but go with your gut feeling.  Finally, courage is where you push yourself until you start giving up, but still keep pushing because you know you can do it no matter what, even if it’s a competition or like I said “a situation”.  It may not be pretty, but if you keep pushing through then it will be beautiful. Just like my judo competitions I try to train as hard as I can, I have my good days where I give it 100% or better in which I’m tired, sweating, and feel like I’m broken down, but no matter what I still try to give it my all and in the end I feel like dying, but it was worth it because if I can give it all in practise than I can give it my all in a competition because there will be no room for me to feel sorry, I've just got to pick myself up and keep fighting.

Competitions now get harder and harder.  I’m going to be a little hypocritical, but at times when you fight hard and you lose, sometimes you have that good feeling inside of you where you know you won’t go down without a fight and if you gave 100% you should be proud of yourself and then go back to the old drawing board and get a new plan, like to learn some more new moves and keep on giving it 100% in practise and to try again in another competition. For example 2-3 years ago I was a green or orange belt I was fighting in a tournament in Regina Saskatchewan and it was my second or third fight, my first fight didn’t go so well but anyways, I’m getting ready for my next fight getting myself warmed up jumping up and down, trying to get myself pumped when I looked on my right and I saw a guy with a brown belt who was about an inch or two bigger than me so I turned away and then I could feel my heart racing, I could feel myself shaking too, so I jumped more trying not to show any fear, I thought to myself he is going to kill me, so when the match ahead of us was over I stood for a second petrified.

I stepped on the mat bowed in and when the referee said “go” my fighting instincts immediately kicked in and we started to go at it, I grabbed his arm sleeve first with my left hand and a high grip with my right hand and pulled him towards my left side and I let go of the sleeve hand and tried to go for a drop, but my opponent managed to counter it and we started to fight on the ground; he tried to get a hold down on me I rolled out of it and so he tried to choke me but I managed to tuck my chin in my gi and waited until the ref said “stop.” So when the ref said stop we got up I looked at my coach he was telling me to do a certain move but I could barely hear him I saw the hand motion to go for a high grip again and work his feet and do a throw so I thought to myself to do a combination so I tried to work the feet and do the throw but my opponent beat me to it first and threw me with either a "hariagoshi" or "ipponsayonagga" and I hit the ground hard and then I heard the ref say “ippon” the match was over, I got up he and I fixed our gi’s and tied our belts, bowed out and shook hands.

As I got off of the mats I had a feeling of pride flowing through me instead of disappointment.  My coach came up to me and said “nice try” and he also said he will help me with a few things, so I went to gather my stuff and changed out of my gi and stayed to support the other fighters in my judo club. And after the tournament was over we went back to the hotel and I went to get something to eat. And the next day went on a bus to back to home. This fight really was significant to me it shows that my sensei’s really believe in me when I don’t and so they encourage me to do my best and to keep on fighting, and that is a fight I will never forget.