blacknebula

Thanks for the input everyone. We had our first practice tonight prior to class. Bassai Dai was a disaster so we quickly ruled that one out. Avoiding Tekki Shodan does seem to be universal advice! Heian Yondan would have been good except that I pulled my hamstring a few weeks ago and am not currently able to pull off a jodan level maegeri. Hopefully it will be better by the time the tournament rolls around but we didn't want to take the chance, so we settled on Heian Sandan. Sensei convinced 2nd kyu lady to take front centre spot. We do have full length mirrors along one wall of the dojo. We sorted out our procedures for walk on, etc. and ran through a few times. It wasn't horrible, but not great either. Ah well, we've got 5 weeks still to practice, practice, and practice some more!

Congratulations!

Herein lies the problem. The other two ladies are good technically, but because I'm the one who initiated the whole thing they are regarding me as the leader and want me to be the middle. However, my belt is purple and the other two brown so if I go in the middle it's glaringly obvious.

I know this would also fit into the sport martial art category, but one of my quesions relates to specific shotokan style kata, so I figured it would be more appropriate in the karate forum. Our provincial tournament is on March 9th. I asked two other ladies to do a team kata with me. I am 4th kyu and they are 2nd and 3rd kyu. 1. We are trying to decide which kata we should do. Bassai Dai would be my first choice, but one of the other ladies isn't totally confident with it so we may need to look for an alternative. Between the five Heian katas and Tekki Shodan, what would be your choice in this situation? Obviously, it depends on our individual strengths/weaknesses etc. but is there a certain kata that you feel is really good or really bad to do as a team? We've already got some advice from a few Sempais at the dojo, but I'm just curious whether that was their personal preference or a generally accepted way of thinking. And I'm not going to say what that advice was because I don't want to influence the responses! 2. We are also debating who should go in the middle position. Highest rank or most confident? Thanks!

I train with two different Senseis, one of whom started out as a student of the other some decades ago. And even they teach the same kata slightly differently!

I think that any instructor has a right to have a profitable business. As long as I am receiving fair value for my money I really don't care what their standard of living is like. The idea of someone living humbly because they devote their lives to their ideals is ridiculous as far as I am concerned. It is not mutually exclusive. And frankly, if I compare the instructor credentials and experience level, overhead costs, etc. of my karate to other activities that my children and I do, I'd be willing to pay way more than my Sensei currently charges!

Well my problem solved itself. Sensei has been making us do katas in reverse during morning training, so I've been spending most of the time trying to wrap my head around the one he did that morning and work on figuring out the one for the following day!

Thanks for the suggestions everyone. I'll go tomorrow and see what happens!

Oh, I've double checked with several different people including my Sensei and I was definitely doing it wrong! It is not a question of the different instructors contradicting each other. Even my husband (who is three belt levels below me) just said "Yeah, I knew that," when I told him about it after class. I just need to figure out how to undo something that has now become habit.

At training on Monday night one of the Sempais corrected me on something in one of the early Heian katas. Nothing major, just a case of having my fist oriented 90 degrees to where it should be (I had palm facing towards me and it was supposed to be facing down). However, I've now been doing this incorrectly for almost 2 years and even though I now know the way my fist should be, the muscle memory keeps putting it the other way and then I remember and switch. Beyond just doing it a billion times the right way, is there anything I can do to extinguish the incorrect response more quickly?

What sort of things do you do? Obviously praticing kata would be a good one, but I'm looking for some other ideas. It is kangeiko week starting Monday, which means in addition to the formal training in the morning and evenings the dojo is also open at lunch for self-training. I like the idea, but have never done this before and I'm not sure how to keep myself occupied the entire time!

I socialize with my Sensei and some of the other instructors outside of the dojo and consider them to be my friends. However, I am very conscious of how I behave in various situations - that is, when I am in the dojo I am a student and act accordingly! When I studied social pyschology I learned that the reasons that people join a group are often different from the reasons that they stay in a group, and affiliation is a huge factor in group retention. Having strong personal bonds between group members, including between the instructor and students, can mean the difference between someone quitting when they hit a rough patch, or not. Of course, this applies mostly to adults. Children usually don't have the cognitive skills to recognize the demands of different roles in regard to the same person and modify their behaviour accordingly.

Congratulations!

Congratulations!

I'm considering next time (and this guy does whine a lot) telling him this is a karate dojo, not a knitting class, but I'm not sure how that'd go over. My Sensei has a variation - "This is a karate class, not ballroom dancing".

Saw a blurb about this in the latest Black Belt magazine. I watched the trailer and it looks pretty interesting, but I was wondering if anyone has seen it? emptyhandthemovie.com

In keeping with the SMART philosophy (goals must be Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and completed within a certain Timeframe), mine are: 1. Successfully grade for brown belt 2. Go to master camp and attend all required and optional trainings 3. Compete in a minimum of two tournaments, at least one of which will be after goal #1 which means free sparring for kumite (less terrified of this than I used to be, but still have a ways to go) 4. Learn* all 15 of the kata required for Shodan (currently pretty solid on 7, 80% on 4, and haven't started the remainder) * defined as being able to do the entire kata from beginning to end on my own time with no prompting, not necessarily proficient to grading standard

First of all here is some perspective: I am also a woman. I am also 4th kyu. There are 3 other ladies in my dojo, but all shodan/nidan so if I am doing the intermediate class I end up sparring with the guys. In my dojo, no contact is allowed until 5th kyu. After that light, non-head contact is allowed but only if Sensei explicity says so. Example - person A attacks, person B blocks and counters, person A is not supposed to block the counter. Person B is expected to touch solidly but not plow Person A. On the rare occasions when I accidentally make harder contact than I was supposed to I apologize to my partner. If they do it to me they also apologize. My opinion: If my Sensei said that I was allowed to hit the guys harder than they are allowed to hit me I would be disturbed by that. Whatever level of contact is the norm for your style/association/dojo, then that should be the expectation for everyone regardless of gender. Having said that though, I really don't have any advice on the best way to handle this situation. Perhaps after I think about it for a bit I will post more.

I will definitely post a summary after I return. The headlining instructors are Senseis Teruyuki Okazaki (ISKF), Yutaka Yaguchi (ISKF), Hideo Ochi (JKA Germany), Masaru Miura (SKI Europe), and Shunsuke Takahashi (TSKF Autrailia/New Zealand). However, I suspect they will mostly be teaching the black belts and the coloured belt classses will be taught by the ISKF technical commitee members - who are all 7th and 8th so pretty awesome too! I don't know exactly what we will learn, but with four hours of training every day for a week, I'm sure I will learn LOTS! There are also technical lectures in the evenings, and a tournament at the end.

Well I did it - mailed my registration for camp today! My Sensei's eyebrows about hit the roof when I told him I was going. He has only been once, when he was testing for Godan a couple of years ago. But a lot of people say that going as a kyu rank is the best time to do it because the classes are so much smaller, I really enjoyed the (different) camp I did last summer, and my husband was able to get the time off to look after the kids while I'm gone, so I decided to go for it.

I just got my first heavyweight gi as a birthday present from hubby, right before my grading for 4th kyu. But I don't really think it matters. If you have trained long enough to feel that you are enjoying it and committing to martial arts on a long term basis, and are comfortable with the expense, then go for it. I like the way the lightweight one FEELS, but prefer the way the heavyweight one LOOKS. So I wear both of mine now, just depending on where I am in the laundry cycle and what mood I'm in.

congrats!

I've only been training for a few years so my perspective is perhaps not as broad as some people on here. However, I find the ego issues tend to crop up more in the middle ranks. All the people that actually instruct are quite humble, in my experience! One day I was the second person to arrive for training and found my Sensei sweeping the floor (we train in the aerobics studio of a fitness centre so can't control the state it is left in between trainings). I immediately offered to take over but he declined and finished off. And in the spring after a tournament where one of our juniors was disqualified due to using a double counter in one-step kumite, Sensei apologized to the student in front of the whole club because he hadn't read the rules carefully enough and had previously advised the student that double counters were allowed. I guess I have been lucky so far in that I have not run into those type of instructors yet.

ROFL at today's episode.... the "massager".... tears were literally running down my face I was laughing so hard!

Results came quicker than expected - I passed and my club also has two new Shodans! Considering we only had five black belts before, that is a pretty major increase.