The Teacher Who Changed the Way I Move

I didn’t grow up in a dojo. I didn’t spend my childhood tying belts or memorizing kata. I found karate at forty — late by most measures, but right on time for the man I was becoming.

I wasn’t looking for a hobby. I was looking for something real — something that challenged me physically, sharpened me mentally, and forced me to grow in ways I couldn’t predict.

I didn’t know what I was looking for.
But I knew I’d recognize it when I saw it.

Then I saw Rick Hotton move.

Just a video online — but it stopped me cold. His karate wasn’t rigid or tense or trapped inside the mechanics of correctness. It didn’t look like performance. It looked like breath. Like thought made visible. Like a human being expressing something true — without force, without pretense.

And I remember thinking:

That.
That is how I want to move.

A week later, by some strange luck or universal timing, I was standing in a seminar with him in the Bay Area. A fresh white belt in a room full of seasoned practitioners.

At one point, he stepped over, looked at my belt, then at me, and said with quiet warmth:

“It’s pretty brave of you to be here.”

He wasn’t flattering me.
He wasn’t talking down to me.
He was simply acknowledging the moment.

And that was the beginning — not just of my training with him, but of a friendship that has shaped my life on and off the mat.

Before Rick — Imitation. After Rick — Understanding.

Before training with him, karate felt like effort — a system of right and wrong, mechanical shapes, tension disguised as strength. I was trying to imitate an idea rather than discover my own expression.

Training with Rick was different.

He taught through subtlety. Through exploration. Through questions instead of answers.

Once, while I was struggling with a technique — overthinking, tightening everything, trying to perform — he watched me quietly, then said:

“Justin… what if you pretended it wasn’t karate for a minute?
What if you just did the movement the way you know it wants to be done?”

That sentence changed everything.

I stopped trying to look like karate.

I started letting myself become it.

The Man Behind the Movement

There are a thousand things I love about Rick — but one of them is that he’s an absolute dork in the very best way.

He’s fascinated by space and aliens.
He loves his cats.
He tends to his koi pond with the seriousness of a monk and the joy of a kid building his first tree fort.

And his home in Florida — a quiet sanctuary with water, trees, and stillness — is a place I’ve been lucky to stay. More than once.

He paints. He writes. He draws. He creates.

All that creativity leaks into his karate — not as style, but as essence.

He laughs easily.
He listens deeply.
And he never rushes truth.

Most importantly: he refuses to hand me answers I haven’t earned.

Sometimes I ask why something isn’t working or how to fix a technique, and he just smiles and says:

“Keep going. The understanding lives in the practice.”

He doesn’t claim to know everything.

He leaves space for mystery — and for growth.

Two Directions, One Path

We don’t move the same — in karate or in life.

I tend to go straight in — assertive, direct, confrontational.

Rick steps off the line — redirecting, absorbing, letting energy pass rather than meeting it head-on.

Over time, through training, countless conversations, and a few silences that spoke louder than any guidance, he taught me something I didn’t know I needed:

Sometimes softness is the deeper form of strength.

The Kind of Friendship You Don’t Get Twice

We’ve both been through dark seasons.
We’ve both hit walls — personal ones, emotional ones.

And when those moments came, neither of us stood at the edge giving advice.

We climbed down into the hole with the other.

We dug together.

That kind of friendship is rare in this world.

Becoming Myself

For a long time, I tried to move like Rick — chasing his softness, his timing, his presence.

But eventually — with his encouragement — I stopped trying to mimic him and started expressing myself.

Now, I practice my karate the way I believe it should be practiced — honestly, curiously, imperfectly — as my own path, not anyone else’s.

I’m still learning. Still refining. Still stumbling forward.

And because of him, I’m doing it with more patience, more awareness, and more permission to be fully myself.

Some teachers make you better at what they teach.

A rare few make you better at being who you are.

Rick is one of those.

And I carry him — not as a model to imitate, but as a reminder:

Keep practicing.
The understanding will come.