aurik

I took the quiz twice -- once I answered per my current school (got a McDojo result), and an ATA school I trained at about 10 years ago (got a "not a McDojo" result).

Oh noes! I'm training at a McDojo!

We don't spar in kobudo per se, but we do perform bunkai of our hojo undo techniques. We use bamboo or rattan bo as they are much less jarring on impacts and fairly inexpensive to replace. When you perform the bunkai for the hojo undo it definitely helps with your technique; poor technique definitely shows when someone is actually whacking you with another weapon.

I mentioned this to Ethan later that day, and he said "Yeah, that's something you start noticing around nidan/sandan" with this "this is super cool" look on his face, which makes me feel like I'm definitely moving in the right direction

So, with 10 games left in the regular season (and 2 games in hand over Nashville), the Blues are sitting 4 points out of a Wild Card spot, and they are playing some of the best hockey in the NHL right now. They are 7-1-2 in their last 10, which is the best record in the Western Conference. Both of their goalies are playing really well -- they've put up a 1.5 team GAA in their last 10 games. If they can keep playing like this through the end of the season, then who knows< they might even make a decent playoff run. Stranger things have happened! (See 2019).

Week 6 is now in the books. Our CI closed the dojo the previous week, since that's when most of the kids were on Spring Break (and he and Heather went to Tahiti for a vacation). So this past week I was fighting the fact that I'd been off for a week. Yes, I can and do train some at home, but I do not have the self-discipline to push myself as hard as others push me. I mean, that's why I train with others. Tuesday's early class was pretty rough. Heather had Parker start class with the usual junbi undo (warmup exercises), skipped hojo undo, and went straight to Sanchin. After Sanchin, we went straight to kata -- 2 each of Kanshiwa, Kanshu (then the yellow/green belts peeled off), Seichin (then the brown belts peeled off), Seisan (then the nikyus & ikkyus peeled off), Seiryu (then the 1st degrees peeled off), then Kanchin. Time for a water break and a few minutes to rest. Next we started doing kata again, but after the first repetition she'd have us face a different direction. After the second repetition, she'd face us to the front, and do mirror-image kata. And she did that for Kanshiwa, Kanshu, Seichin, Seisan. She did *not* have us do Seiryu or Kanchin mirror-image, but for Seiryu she had us all face different directions so we ran the risk of running into each other. Needless to say, by the time Kanchin came around, I was completely gassed. One thing I'm noticing that as I'm past 50, it doesn't take long for my conditioning to deteriorate, and it's harder to get it back when I start training again. So when we do close the dojo I'll need to make a point to do more training on my own or at least SOME type of cardio. Wednesday night was our black belt prep class - as this class is mainly black belts, she's more focusing on fine tuning our techniques than she is on yelling at us to do things right. (Once you've been through the prep cycle once she goes a LOT easier on you). Occasionally she'll have other instructors come up and run parts of the class so that we can get other instructor's perpective. Last night, she asked me to do the student's Sanchin checks. This was a bit of a break for me, which I appreciated. So I did all their checks, and then we went straight to the other techniques. I feel that Parker and I are starting to look really good with our bunkai and yakusoku kumite drills. I did make a point to ask Heather if to ask Richard (our CI) if we could practice the bunkai downstairs the last couple weeks before the test. Unfortunately when we are upstairs, we (or at least I) can't really do the sword attacks due to the low ceiling. I smacked the rafters once with a bokken, and I really don't want to do that again. Thursday was a combination of kobudo training and teaching. In kobudo class we focused on the first set of bo no hojo undo bunkai, and ran through that set over and over, focusing on a few of the details. The details aren't as important for me since I was the lowest rank in the group (geared more for brown and black belts), but I figure while I'm working on them let's not get into bad habits. That was also a pretty tiring session, but in a good way. Saturday we had our semiannual black belt (and black belt candidate) training. This is where our CI transfers a lot of new material that he's picked up from other senior instructors. He gave us corrections on a few of the hojo undo techniques, and then he had us run sanchin twice as a large group. He then broke us up into smaller groups, with the older students going first and the younger students second. And he did a lot of checking on Sanchin to the point we ended up staying in stance for about 7-10 minutes, which feels like a LOT longer. By the end of this, my quad was cramping and my shoulders were exhausted. But I made it through. For the second half of the day, we ran through kata, starting with Seiryu and then moving on to Kanchin (required for 2nd and 3rd degrees respectively). He broke down some of techniques, and discussed how as black belts we're supposed to start learning more of the "soft" aspects of Uechi-Ryu. One thing he mentioned is how in certain spots we're supposed to "float" or be light on our feet. And he talked about how we're supposed to start learning to flow from one movement to the next. After that, he had us start working one of the sequences in Kanchin, arguably one of the hardest ones. He broke this down into its individual components, starting with the first movement, then practicing that, then moving onto the next in the sequence, etc etc. The sequence involves doing a movement that is interpreted as catching a front kick in a shiko-dachi and then throwing the kick (and the opponent). He discussed how you need to start the throw from your back foot, and I swear, I could see the power actually transfer up his leg, through his hips, to the shoulders and the arms, like a wave moving up through him and into the imaginary opponent's leg. It's EXTREMELY hard to describe, and it'll take me a long time to figure out how to do it... but it's really cool that I was able to *see* that.

My (13 year old) son Zach was watching the animated version and tried to get us into the live-action. I tried to watch it but just couldn't develop an appreciation for it. We unfortunately had to put the kebash on his one-piece watching because it was affecting his behaviour in ways we did not like.

Yes, but in your first message you said:

I saw that this morning. The best (short) tribute I have read so far was, "Chuck Norris decided it was time to leave. Death kindly held the door open for him." I had heard he was hospitalized yesterday, but this still came as a bit of surprise. RIP

It is certainly your prerogative to decide if and who you will teach. While I primarily teach adults, there are a number of kids of various ages who attend the adult classes I teach. There are some who are an absolute joy to teach -- we have one kid who is about 13-14. He is struggling to learn the material, but he is always willing to listen, is very humble and respectful, and after every class I teach, he will come up to me and personally thank me for working with him. On the other hand we have other kids who have a hard time focusing, and when you're trying to teach a lesson, they are doing silly stuff. I mean, yes they are kids, but that's the reason that I prefer to teach adults over kids. Teaching any age of student can be challenging for a multitude of reasons. Younger can kids have a hard time understanding some of the concepts you're wanting to teach. Teenage kids often have attitudes, and lose control of their bodies due to all the growth spurts and changes that are happening, and adults are often set in their ways. However, I will also say that I learn every bit as much by teaching as I do from receiving instruction from others. They often say "the best way to really understand something is to teach it to someone else"

Goudas should have definitely gotten more than 5 games because of that, but I suspect the CBA requires that he be a repeat offender to a certain degree.

One thing we are stressing in our test prep classes is the concept of "sincere attacks". The attacker does a disservice to the defender if he/she does not perform an attack that will strike (but not injure!) the defender unless the defender performs the proper defense and counter. This is the reason we use shinai instead of bokken when training our bunkai -- if you smack someone in the head or the hands with a shinai, it'll hurt a bit. If you do the same with a bokken, you'll likely injure him, possibly seriously. I speak from experience; I've been smacked in the fingertips and the forehead with a shinai once or twice. It's no fun and a harsh reminder of why as the defender you need to intercept the sword attacks before they get any momentum. (Yeah, nobody's going to attack you with a sword, but a baseball bat or pool cue is a more realistic possibility).

Anyone who is an instructor or assistant instructor can sit on a test board for candidates up to one rank below their rank. So as a candidate for sandan, the voting members of my test board must be at least yondan or above. We like to have at least 5 voting members of a test board, but for higher ranks that isn't always a possibility. For example, Heather may be testing for Godan in our testing cycle, depending on if Master Thompson (judan, head of our organization) approves it. Tests for ranks of godan or above are generally abbreviated tests which only involve demonstrations of the core kata (Sanchin, Seisan, Sanseiryu), along with an oral examination UNLESS the candidate is also testing for their shihan license. In that case, the candidate is given essentially the same test as for yondan. We test for *all* ranks; as a Hanshi Judan, Master Thompson can promote candidates by himself for any rank up to Kudan. I'm not sure what the process is to promote a candidate to Judan, but I believe it involves the Zen Okinawa Karatedo Renmei, which (I think) is an organization of 10th degree black belts who evaluate, test and promote other 10th degree black belts. Since I will not live long enough to test for a 10th degree, I'm not worried about that particular detail Another interesting detail I learned is that they are looking at "pre-testing" the instructor candidates for nidan and sandan. We typically do our dan gradings on a Sunday afternoon. In previous gradings we had a morning grading and afternoon grading. What they are looking at doing now is testing the instructor candidates on Friday evening or possibly Saturday, and then using our newly promoted instructors to form two complete test boards, so we can run two tests concurrently. We have four instructors testing this cycle (two for nidan, two for sandan), so that would give us enough instructors to have two full test boards running concurrently. Our school is growing slowly and steadily -- as evidenced by the difficulty in finding a parking spot on certain evenings But our CI is also doing an excellent job at retaining students through and beyond (first degree) black belt. In any given adult class, we generally have at least 4 or 5 black belt trainees.

Uechi-Ryu has 3 core kata: Sanchin, Seisan, and Sanseiryu. Our other kata were developed later as "bridging kata" to help students transition between the core 3. I guess technically if Uechi-Ryu "owns" any kata, it would be our 5 "bridging" kata, since they were developed specifically for Uechi-Ryu.

Okay, I guess I overreached with that statement. But the first half, "Uechi-Ryu is Sanchin" is definitely true.