aurik

It has been a ... little while since I last posted in here. Life has been pretty darned hectic, trying to keep up with family life, work life, martial arts life, and posting in here. Fortunately, the martial arts life hasn't suffered, but keeping up with this thread sadly has. I have continued to train in Uechi-Ryu and kobudo as often as my other commitments allow, and I have also continued to teach almost every week. Zach is preparing to enter high school, so it seems that there's always some new event associated with that to go to. Last night it was an introduction to the different classes and "pathways" he can take at his high school. Fortunately, the high school is less than a mile from our house, so unless the weather is absolutely awful, we shouldn't ever have to drive him to/from school. Here in Colorado, we have a "choice of school" system, where you have the school you are zoned for, but you can actually select any school within the school district. We have several excellent schools that are options (including the one he picked), so unfortunately some of his friends may be going to a different school. Fortunately, many of them are going to the same school At the beginning of this year, I made several resolutions. The first one is to be more consistent in my training - not just in martial arts, but also getting into better shape overall. As I get older, I find that if I take any significant time off (more than a week), it takes a REALLY long time to get back to where I was. This kicks in especially hard if I spend any time at sea level. Back in October I took a trip to see the St Louis Blues (ice hockey team) play their home opener. We got a hotel within walking distance of the arena, and I had the opportunity to show Tracy and Zach some of the places I really enjoyed growing up. The pre-game festivities were a lot of fun, and I got a couple autographs from some of the Blues' alumni. Unfortunately the Blues just flat out got blown away in the game, but everything else was fun. Well, while I was there, I went to visit a Uechi-Ryu Kenyukai (different organization) dojo and both Zach and I had the opportunity to train with them for a day. I got some very good and pointed feedback on my rank kata. Some of the feedback was specific to the Kenyukai organization, but I found all of it quite valuable and insightful. I've had a couple promotions in Kobudo, and most of all I'm finding my technique improving substantially. The key improvement I think I've found is that I'm more able to activate my hips when wielding the tonkua, and that is helping me with the other weapons - bo and sai mainly. I'm also finding that there are lessons from kobudo that translate directly to Uechi-Ryu - after all, karate and kobudo were developed alongside each other, so the lessons in one often apply to the other. I've also continued to progress in my bladesmithing/weaponsmithing. Over the holidays I took a class for a kitchen knife (they're a LOT harder than they look) which turned out amazing, and last week I made an arming sword. The kitchen knife class was very well-run and I am delighted with the result. The arming sword class taught me a LOT about consistency, both with the forging and the grinding. I still have some work to finish out on the arming sword, but once I get that finished, I'll be posting the pictures here. Lastly, I just got the news that I'll be testing for sandan this May, and (assuming I pass), I should also receive my Shidoin license. Just in the past few months I've started to feel pretty confident in my Kanchin kata (required for 3rd degree) enough to ask for help in fine-tuning it. So I'll need to make a point in getting to the advanced adult class more often. This will also mean skipping some of Zach's Scout activities, but that's why we have a 2 parent team here. I promise the next update won't be NEARLY as far off as this one was...

I consider ukemi to be one of the absolutely most important lessons I ever learned in martial arts. It literally saved my life once. About 15 years ago, I was visiting family near Aspen, CO. I was carrying a large box in both hands on an icy patch of ground. My feet slipped out from underneath me, and I went from vertical to horizontal in an instant. If I had not known instinctively to land flat on my back with my chin tucked firmly to my chest, I would likely not be here today.

Our CI thinks of the curriculum as a menu. You present the whole menu to your students, and then they can pick and choose what items off the menu really speak to them. However, as an instructor, it is his (and my) responsibility to present the entire menu to his students. The official, tested curriculum has changed very little in the 8 years that I have been training. There are a few small items that have been added that were in response to COVID (set sparring combinations to give students a primer when we couldn't actually touch our opponents). Also some small items have changed in terms of execution. However, the on-paper requirements are the same. I will say that things have evolved a bit here and there. Every so often, our CI will visit Okinawa or a seminar, and find out that the grandmasters of the various organizations have changed something. For example, at one point one of our drills was performed with the flat fist (seiken-tsuki). Then suddenly it changed to a leopard-fist (hiraken-tsuki). No explanation as to why, but it was just different. These changes are sometimes specific to one organization within Uechi-Ryu, and sometimes they are across all organizations. In any case, our karate slowly evolves over time.

This got me thinking quite a bit -- we don't frequently pull hikite in Uechi-Ryu. For example, our kata generally start with the hands in a guard position, we chamber the strike, execute the strike, and then return to the guard position. We do pull hikite in some of our two-person drills, when we execute a sequence of strikes. However, it's sufficiently uncommon that we don't explain the "why"; we just do it. However, in thinking about the reasons you posted, several of them come to mind -- specifically the grabbing and pulling your opponent, and also activating the hips. IMO these both go hand in hand for us. We are taught that when we receive a strike, we should grab it, pull it (to disrupt the opponent), and this also activates the hips to prime the counterstrike.

This is more of a HEMA (Historical European Martial Art) topic, but definitely weapons-related. Last week I went down to Kilroy's Workshop in Colorado Springs and made.. you guessed it, a poleaxe! The class was originally designed with the venetian poleaxe in mind, but I had a couple of "happy accidents", and ended up with something slightly different (but very cool). We started out with a chunk of 4140 steel (a chromium tool steel, used frequently in car engines). We punched and drifted a hole in it (for the handle), and then squeezed out the back end which was supposed to be a hammer head: https://i.imgur.com/Ih0CMci.jpeg https://i.imgur.com/SN4kZSA.jpeg Next, we were supposed to start flattening out the larger head, which was intended to be the axehead. I ended up flattening out the hammer end, so I went with it and turned it into a spike/hook. After that, I used a power hammer to forge out the axe head into rough shape: https://i.imgur.com/HvOvX1g.jpeg Next stop: the grinder. In this case, an angle grinder with a flap disc. I ground off the forge scale (magnetite, a specific type of iron oxide that occurs at high temperatures) and ground in the profile shape: https://i.imgur.com/b8XZBqu.jpeg Next came the heat treatment. Heat it up to a reddish-orange heat, let it cool down. That relaxes some of the stresses induced from forging. Then heat to an orange-red and quench in oil. That looked like this: https://i.imgur.com/2Ozi2qB.jpeg After that, I took a 12" piece of 1 inch square bar, used an angle grinder to split it in half down 5" down, then forged the tip out into a spear point, and forged the split ends into a pair of langets that fit over the axe/spike head: https://i.imgur.com/rhJgHGT.jpeg I then took a 6' long piece of hickory, rounded it, shaped the end to fit the eye of the axe/spike head, and drilled a hole through the spear tip + axe head + pole. Attached with one 1/4" iron rivet and 4 3/16" bronze rivets. Add in some mild steel langets to finish things out: https://i.imgur.com/3lfHhL4.jpeg https://i.imgur.com/xUZyxMX.jpeg https://i.imgur.com/tAKawuD.jpeg https://i.imgur.com/Us2dFfj.jpeg

My wife has started writing recently. Not her memoirs or anything, but a story she wants to tell. She doesn't know if she'll share it with anyone (even me), but she is writing. If you are toying with the idea of writing your memoirs or the history of the SKAA, or whatnot - go ahead and do it. Just because you don't feel like you're a good writer now doesn't mean you can't learn the skill. And if you decide it is something you want to publish you can always take one of those ghost writers up on their offer, and you will already have something for them to start from. Bob, there's no time to start like the present. That goes for any journey, whether it be writing, self-realization, martial arts, or whatnot.

So has anyone seen it yet? Worth it, or wait until it hits streaming services?

Bob, your mind and your insights are the greatest gifts you can give to your students. In your decades of experience, you can look at someone and see exactly what that student needs to change to get better. That is what I love about training with senior instructors -- not that they necessarily can demonstrate the physical skills that I'm trying to learn. Their value to me is that they can look at the techniques I'm trying to do, and give me those nuggets of insight that makes my karate better. You have senior students that can demonstrate the moves with the right speed, power, and technique. However, what you bring to the table is the ability to look at a student's technique and say "Do this differently", and those little changes and tweaks can improve their technique by leaps and bounds. I was just talking about this a few weeks ago -- we had a guest instructor come to our dojo back in May, and in about 15 minutes over the course of 2 days, he helped my son's technique improve more than I've seen in the past year. Not through demonstration, but through observation and verbal feedback. Something like that you can do from a chair, and can be invaluable to the student in question.

Game 3 was just a bucket of mayhem. 140 penalty minutes between the two teams -- shattering the previous NHL record for PIMs in a Stanley Cup Finals game. By the third period, the refs had just had enough and started handing out game misconducts to anyone who stepped over the line. The Panthers ended up with 6 power plays. If Edmonton wants to have a chance of pulling this off, they've got to get their emotions in check and stay out of the penalty box.

Oshie was one of my favorite Blues' players when he played for them. He played with such heart and intensity -- he was a joy to watch. I was sad to see he'd been traded to the Caps, but I was very happy to see that he won a Cup with them.

You have to wonder though. He took the team to the Conference Finals 3 years in a row. Whoever the next coach is is going to have some mighty hefty shoes to fill.

Sadly, the Hurricanes are 0-13 in Conference Finals games going all the way back to their last Stanley Cup in 2006. They haven't won a single game in the conference finals since then.

As a former Dallas resident, I gotta say "GO STARS!"

So I saw Ian yesterday at his dan grading (he was grading for nidan). I asked him about that sokusen geri -- the third time, Gushi sensei hit him hard. Of course, Ian, being the good Uechi Ryu karateka he is, kept a stolid face. Gushi leaned in and whispered, "That hurt, didn't it?" He definitely nodded. It turns out he had a bruise on that thigh visible from across the room (his mom noticed too.) Fortunately being the young guy he is, he recovered in a few days.

This past weekend was, to put it lightly, intense. We had a guest instructor, Tsukasa Gushi, visit our dojo over the weekend and taught a seminar for both Uechi-Ryu and Matayoshi Kobudo. He is the head of the Ryukokaku Karate & Kobudo Association -- at his dojo you train both karate and kobudo as part of the same program (unlike ours where they are separate programs and ranking). His other job -- a professional race car driver. The last time he was in Colorado he raced in the Pikes Peak Hill Climb. The weekend was, for a lack of a better term, intense. We trained for 2 hours in Kobudo on Friday, 2 hours in kobudo followed by 2 hours of karate on Saturday, and then another 2 hours of Karate on Sunday. There was a second 2 hour karate session on Sunday, but Zach and I had other plans -- we were taking Mrs Aurik out to celebrate Mother's Day. The Kobudo sessions covered material I'd never seen before. We started out with a new bo kata: Seijun no Bo, followed by an Eiku (Okinawan oar) kata: Tsuka Akachu no Eikudi, followed by the Jiffa (Okinawan hairpin) kata. We had trained a bit with the Eiku the previous week, and I have to say that I'm very grateful that I have gotten used to my purpleheart beast. The Eiku is very heavy (even just a traditional oak one), and the balance takes quite a bit of getting used to. Fortunately, one of our instructors brought a batch of his own, and at least some of them were made of poplar, which is oh so much lighter. I would say that over the course of the 4 hour seminar, I started getting the hang of the Eiku, but I still have a long ways to go before I can say I am comfortable with it. And the Jiffa kata reminds me a LOT of some Shuri-Ryu I had done and seen many many years ago -- it reminded me a lot of the Kanku Sho kata, with the crescent kick/spin/duck to the ground sequence. Unfortunately we only had a handful of real jiffa, so we made do with substitutes. The Uechi-Ryu segments of the seminar were very enlightening as well. While we didn't cover anything really new until the end of the second session, he brought new understanding and interpretations to everything we did know. For example, he started by evaluating our hojo undo techniques, providing feedback on issues he saw. For example, he really stressed the fact that every block we do needs to end with our hands in a tiger claw. Why? Because everytime we block/receive a technique, we should get in the habit of grabbing the attacker. Likewise, he had slightly different interpretations of how to perform certain of our techniques, such as seiken tsuki and hiraken tsuki. We then ended the hojo undo session with a discussion of Uechi-Ryu's sokusen geri, or toe kick. Gushi sensei started that section out by demonstrating the toe kick on one of our black belts (Ian) in the outer thigh. He wasn't gentle with it, either -- I hope the bruises aren't too bad. Next, we started working kata, primarily kanshiwa and seisan. One of the things I remember most is when he was discussing the lunging elbow strike. The tendency is to lunge forward, stop, and then do the elbow strike. He then demonstrated on me that the proper way is to lunge and strike in the same movement - it was quite effective. I had to step back several feet to get my balance. I'll need to figure out how to demonstrate that to my students next time without actually hurting them Towards the end of the second session, we worked on their version of dan kumite. It is much like our dan kumite, but they add a few extra moves to each sequence. I liked it, but sadly we had to get out of there in time to take my wife out for her Mother's Day celebration. The best part of the seminar though was what Zach got out of it. As he has grown so quickly, he has gotten "floppy" in his movements. He tries to put power into everything, but it's undisciplined power. Gushi sensei noticed this and pulled him aside several times over the course of the seminar. He said 'for now' (next year or so), focus on doing your techniques without any hip pivot or shoulder pivot. Learn disciplined movements. And he listened. And over the course of the seminar, as he kept getting that feedback from an outside source, his technique improved noticeably. I made a point to tell him how much better his techniques looked, and I made it a point to tell him to keep working on it. Sometimes, getting the right outside opinion makes all the difference.