Sarah, 35, school teacher, Dubai. Ten years teaching brave. Three months living it.
Sarah had a phrase she used with her Year 5 class regularly: brave doesn't mean not scared. Brave means doing the thing anyway. She'd said it so many times she'd stopped hearing it as something that applied to her.
She started training at DKing Combat because she was nervous about the assessment. She thought: if I don't go, I'll never know. She went.
Not combat training specifically. Of being visibly bad at something in front of people. Of being the least capable person in the room. Sarah was excellent at her job and had become, without noticing it, someone who only showed up in rooms where she was already good.
The assessment was nothing like she'd feared. DKing Saad asked her what she wanted to develop. She said: confidence in my own body. He said: that's specific, we can work on that. The matter-of-fact quality of it was reassuring.
She was not the worst person in the room. She was also not the best. There were movements she couldn't do, and DKing Saad showed her modifications without making a thing of it. She came back the following Tuesday partly because she didn't want to not come back having come once.
"I teach children that effort matters more than outcome. Then I spent years avoiding things I wasn't already good at. Training made me notice that."
She started letting her students see her get things wrong without immediately fixing them. Her Year 5 class — she'd like to think — got a better version of the "brave doesn't mean not scared" lesson, because it came from someone practicing it rather than performing it.
She trains at Max Burn Gym, Al Quoz 3. Tuesdays and Fridays before school. She still gets nervous before some sessions. She goes anyway.
DKing Combat System is application-only training at Max Burn Gym, Al Quoz 3, Dubai.
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