Back in 1990, The Day ran a story on Zach Arzamarski, who was born four months early weighing only one pound, 12 ounces. Day staff writer Lucy Crider wrote about Arzamarksi’s first year, detailing his 100 days in an incubator at Women and Infants’ Hospital in Providence and illnesses he battled as a result of underdeveloped lungs.

Last month, Shawn Floyd, owner of the Mystic Dojo of Yamashita International Karate, wrote to the Times to tell us that Arzamarski, now 27, recently earned his first-degree black belt in kobudo, only the second to do so at the school.

Floyd said Arzamarski started at another school before transferring to Mystic and started in the school’s kobudo program, which is the Okinawan study of weapons. Students start with the bo, or staff, and progress onto other weapons such as nunchuks, daggers and sickles.

“He’s a natural,” he said. Arzamarski was his first student to enter the kobudo program without first training with him in karate.

Dorothy Arzamarski, Zach’s mother, said her son goes to the dojo twice a week and loves it. She said it was nerve-racking when he was first born, not knowing whether he would survive after having been born so prematurely, but kobudo has helped him come out of his shell and become more outgoing.

“He has just really picked it up and excelled in it,” she said, adding that the forms and drills were fascinating. “He just really, truly enjoys it and I’m pretty sure... that he will continue on.”

Zach Arzamarski said he enjoyed learning the sai, a type of dagger, but particularly enjoys training with the bo.

To earn his black belt, Arzamarski attended a seminar at the Mystic Dojo with Master Tadashi Yamashita. Floyd said earning a first-degree black belt is similar to graduating high school, and each additional degree confers a deeper understanding of the martial art.