For your first lesson, wear loose, light clothing, and expect to train in your bare feet. To avoid injury to yourself and others you will be required to take off all jewellery; any pieces that cannot be removed must be completely covered with sticking plaster. This rule will apply to all training sessions.
Unless you are very fit and very flexible, beginning karate will be a severe physical challenge. You will be bombarded by Japanese words and phrases and you will find it hard to follow what is going on. The best general rule for the beginner is to try to copy what the more experienced students are doing.
You will take up strange stances and undertake strange movements. You will ache and sweat, but gradually your muscle-memory will learn the moves, the stances, the sequences.
In a few months you will become familiar with the grading syllabus, the list of what you have to be able to do to earn your first belt, and without being aware of it you will already have become stronger, more supple, and will feel more alive than you did when you started, only a few months before.
After that the art is an endless journey with profound physical and mental effects. Though we mostly refer to the art as karate, its real title is karate-do, which means the empty-hand-way, the empty-hand-journey, the empty-hand-pilgrimage.
The most widely practised style of karate is Shotokan. This emphasises strong technique and long-distance fighting. One club in the North-East of Scotland that teaches Shotokan karate is Shi-Gaku-Kan Karate Club which is affiliated to the Shotokan Karate Kanazawa-Ryu International Federation (SKKIF).