How Martial Arts has Changed My Life

I took my first class about a month after my 11th birthday. I had been begging my parents for a while to let me join karate. They kept putting it off, because as any child I had phases where I wanted to take up something. Of course they never lasted long. It started out with T-ball, that lasted one season. Next was soccer, again one season, then it went to skateboarding, yo-yoing, dirt bike racing, ect. Each time I had a dream my parents would go out and buy all the nessesary equipment, and they would sit there and watch me try to go out and acheive my dream. Then I got hooked on playing video games. My days were consumed with sitting there in front of the TV. I started gaining a lot of weight, I did not see it at the time, but I guess my parents did. They came home one day and said "We signed you up for karate, your first class is tomorrow". I was excited after all I had been wanting to take karate for a long time. I walked into class the next day and reality hit me. I was 11 years old and really out of shape. There was a lot of things that I could not do. As always my parents sat there and cheered me on. After a few weeks of being in class everyday, I could do the things that I had not been able to do in the beginning. I could see changes in myself. The physical changes only made me want to be in there even more. I suddenly had confidence in myself that I had never had befor. I train 6 days a week, there is no time to sit in front of the TV playing video games, and I could not be happier!