One Beer Karate

Over the last year or so my philosophy pertaining to karate is to have a "one beer" mind. This is my personal Zen state, if that makes sense.

Occasionally when training in the garage I'll open a good craft beer and sip it through my hour or so work out. The slight alcohol induced relaxed feeling is what I'm referring to - it's a state of gentle relaxation with a slightly elevated level of self awareness. Certainly not enough to effect my performance, but it is felt and often causes me to pause and ponder a kata sequence for its logical real world application(s).

Another effect an occasional, casual consumption of a quality beer has during exercise (again not slamming it down, but a sip or two periodically over the course of an hour or so) is to relax the body. This is similar to the effects of performing techniques to exhaustion where the muscles reach such a relaxed state the technique becomes almost effortless. While I'm not advocating switching from repetition of techniques to drinking beer to improve one's karate, I am saying it has its place in my ongoing pursuit of learning Shotokan karate as I understand it.

Hope this makes sense. That's all for now...