In mid-September something happens in our hall that does not repeat during the year. Five or six people stand in the line-up before class who are here for the first time. Not one, as usual - five. That is the only difference between September and any other month, and it matters more than it sounds.
Why it is easier when you are not the only new one
The biggest obstacle to walking into a training hall is not fitness. It is the feeling that every eye will be on you. Someone arriving in February often genuinely is the only beginner that evening, and spends the first hour convinced that everyone can see how badly they are standing.
In September that falls away. When five people are new, you are not the exception, you are a group. Mistakes are spread out, the teacher explains basics out loud because several people need them at once, and nobody feels they are holding up the class. By November those same people are a group who know each other - and that, more often than anything, is what decides whether someone stays.
What September has that January does not
January sign-ups are worse, even though there are more of them. The difference is the reason behind them.
In January people enrol because they promised themselves something. The promise is external - it came from dissatisfaction with last year, not from curiosity. Once six weeks pass and the promise fades, there is nothing left to get you out of the flat on a Tuesday evening.
September is different because your timetable is being rebuilt anyway. School starts, work returns to a rhythm, the calendar restructures itself. Training inserted in the week when everything else is still settling has a far better chance of becoming part of the week rather than something added to it.
In practice that means two evenings that are no longer free in your calendar from September onwards. Not because you forced yourself, but because they were taken from the start.
The weather is on your side
In September it is still light when you leave the hall. That sounds marginal until November arrives.
Start in September and you get six weeks where the journey to training is pleasant. The habit sets during that time. When it does turn cold and dark, you are no longer deciding whether to go - on Tuesday evening you simply go, because you have gone eight times already. Start in November and you have to make that same decision from scratch every time, in the worst possible conditions.
If you missed September
We do not run seasonal courses with closed enrolment - you can join at any point in the year, mid-month included. Missing it does not mean waiting.
Two suggestions for anyone arriving outside September. First: come with someone. Partner, friend, colleague - it does not matter; two beginners are to each other what the whole group is in September. Second: sign up for three months rather than one. Not for the price, though the block is cheaper, but because the decision gets made once instead of every month.
What to do this week
Look at the timetable and pick the slot that actually suits you - not the one that would suit you if you were a tidier person. The 6 a.m. class is excellent for someone who is never master of their own evenings, and poor for someone who does not get to bed before eleven.
Then come to one class. Do not sign up in advance, do not buy equipment, do not prepare physically. Arrive in comfortable clothes, leave your shoes outside the hall, and do as much of the hour as you can.
If it suits you, enrolling afterwards takes five minutes. If it does not, you have spent one hour of a September evening - which, in a month when there are still plenty of evenings, is a fairly cheap experiment.
