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When you first get into martial arts, or even if you’re a seasoned practitioner with a few years’ experience, sometimes it’s easy to get carried away. Whether you’re young and enthusiastic, or just young at heart, here are 20 signs that you might be getting a little obsessed…

Man wearing a black belt as a tie
    1. You turn on light switches with a knife-hand strike (or a fingertip thrust!) and a loud KIAI!
    2. You close (or open) doors with a spinning back-kick.
    3. You sit at your desk or in front of the TV in a horse stance. Let’s get those thighs nice and strong, people!
    4. Your Summer barbecue with friends turns into a wrestling or sparring session.
    5. You roundhouse kick the traffic cones on your walk home from the pub.
      5
      b. You roundhouse kick traffic cones off a friend’s head on your walk home from the pub (I’ve definitely never done this one). I promise.
    6. Your skirting board is covered in pencil marks where you’ve marked off your leg stretching progress.
    7. You bow when walking into a room.
      7b. You turn and bow when leaving a room
    8. You shout OSS when acknowledging or agreeing with your partner’s/boss’s instructions.
    9. You don’t sit on the floor to play with your kids. You kneel in seiza posture.
    10. You forget your shoes and walk around barefoot all the time.
    11. You stick tabs to the end of your dressing-gown belt as a reward for brushing your teeth consistently. 
    12. When riding the Tube/subway you don’t hold onto the handrails but adopt a deep front stance. A great opportunity to work on your balance.
    13. You purchase jeans not for how they look, but for how high you can kick in them.
    14. You always adopt a fighting stance when being photographed.
    15. You throw techniques in your sleep, and your partner is not appreciative of your reverse elbow strikes.
    16. You practise new techniques on your family. “Just grab my wrist like this please, honey…”.
    17. You shrimp out of bed in the morning. 
    18. You give more wardrobe space to gis/doboks/rashguards than you do to your work clothes.
    19. Every corner of your house is filled with obscure oriental weapons. 
    20. You armbar your kids when they steal the remote (please don’t do this, one day they’ll be better and stronger than you).

 

So how many of these have YOU done? What’s your score out of twenty? And have we missed any? Let us know in the comments. 

If by any chance you’re not obsessed with martial arts yet and we haven’t put you off with the list above, why not check out our juniors and adults programmes?