Everything and a Little More

I give karate everything I have, and a little more. The roundhouse kick is the most challenging because it is the most painful.
It's better not to be shy about them, so I go for it when I can and use the time to rest when I can't. Sensei knows I struggle with these; a quick glance of eye contact is enough to remind me that I need to take my limits seriously, as we all do. Just don't take them too seriously, lest they get in the way or become overbearing obstacles.

It takes a *lot* of prep work to get my balance under control, and then it takes modifying the move to stay balanced. Maybe in five or ten years I will be able to do this move without as much pain or fear of falling--but I'm not holding my breath on this. A better use of my time will be on steady and consistent improvement.

EDS is so unpredictable that every class presents an almost unique series of challenges. Karate is good for me because of this, not in spite of this: it means that the training I do in the dojo is well rounded,  approaching all body parts, even the eyeballs. Even the physical hiding spots of emotions, all the physical places that I tuck my stress, are sought out and worked.

Of course it runs through my head every day that, if I want people to take me seriously when I tell them that EDS is incredibly painful and terrible, that it must be confusing for them to also hear that I practice karate. The gap is in the cost of my karate practice: constant hypervigilance, enormous compensations of time and other activities, energy depletion (Google "spoon theory") and the looming knowledge that I will never, ever, just get up and go.

Karate is the one physical thing I allow myself to do with as little physical accommodation as I can get away with: I go without splints so that my whole body has to work as one cooperative being; I keep my movements as close to their intended paths as I can in order to maximize my strikes; I practice daily for maximum muscle memory; I push myself to hydrate ahead of time so I can build endurance workout stopping for water every five minutes....