“Fish and bear palm, one cannot choose both” is an old Chinese proverb, which means “unable to make up one’s mind as to which of two desirable things to choose”. When the new academic year begins, there are always students coming up to Senseis and say, “I am a student of Form 5 (or 7); I’ll have to concentrate on my study and hence would like to suspend my karatedo training temporarily.” From experience, some of them may return for karatedo training in one year’s time, only finding out that they will have to spend another half year to catch up what they have lost. Not only this, they will also find that the karatedo standard of their peers has been elevated to new height. This creates a great contrast between their standard and that of their peers, with which they may find hard to adapt to. If they could not adapt to this reality, or are not properly counselled, it is not unusual that they may give up their karatedo training.

However, please ask yourselves, is it always the case that once you give up karatedo training, then you will get good academic result?

As a matter of fact, the ability of concentration and sense of target should have been empowered in all karatedo practitioners in their processes of training. With a view to assisting their studying, students should prepare a systematic timetable of studying and reasonably set a number of studying targets to achieve. With the empowered mental strength resulted from karatedo training, it is sure that most of these targets could be fulfilled and hence students will be greatly benefited from karatedo even academically by “half the work with double results”. Once this is achieved, students will have spare time to practise karatedo. Moreover, the training of karatedo involves a great amount of physical exercises. These exercises will strengthen the functioning of the lungs and heart and enhance the metabolism of the whole body; thus improve health condition and help relaxing the stress and pressure brought about from academic study. Therefore it can be concluded that practicing karatedo is never an obstacle to academic study, but quite the opposite. It is essential that students should make good use of their time in arranging the timetable for their daily lives.