aurik

Last weekend was a VERY busy weekend at the dojo. We had our annual town fair, where our CI has a booth and runs a demonstration every year. This year he had over 40 students participating in the demonstrations for both karate and kobudo. We then had the advanced black belt test on Saturday, with 3 nidan candidates, 2 sandan candidates, one godan and one rokudan candidate. I had some nerves when I was warming up before the test, but the sanchin segment cleared them up pretty nicely. When you are performing your fundamental kata with someone beating on you, it actually helps you focus (when you've done this long enough, that is). Our CI's father (we usually just call him Hanshi) did my testing, and he made a point to leave large red fist marks on my pecs, abs, and lats. My rank kata (kanchin) went extremely well. I performed it at a speed faster than I intended to, but I was consistent throughout the kata. The other candidates said I did really well so I'm happy with that. Everything else went well, I was able to maintain my energy levels for the Seisan bunkai, right up until I bowed to the test board, bowed off the mats, and then all the energy left my body. Jason, a retired FBI agent and Hanshi's seniormost student, did my oral exam. It was very different than what I was expecting. We're generally given an information packet of questions that are likely to be on the exam, including history of Uechi-Ryu, information on key people in our lineage, vocabulary, etc. Jason asked me none of those. He started off by asking me how long I'd been training Uechi-Ryu (a bit over 8 years now), and asked me what struck me as different from Uechi-Ryu from other karate styles -- I discussed how most of the time we started our techniques with an open-handed kamae. We then discussed the origins and reasons behind that. It was a very interesting and insightful discussion. In the end we all passed. Heather (our CI's wife) had rolled her ankle earlier in the week and was performing her test with a hairline fracture in her fibula (!!!!). Fortunately since she had already earned her Shihan license, her exam was just 3 original kata (sanchin, seisan, sanseiryu) + oral exam. She absolutely nailed each segment, and then once she was out of sight of the judges, she would lay down, stretch out, and regain her composure. In any case, all 6 of us passed the first test of the weekend: 3 for nidan, Parker and me for sandan, Heather for godan, and Ethan (our CI's younger brother) for rokudan. Test #2 was Sunday morning. We had a total of 9 candidates in the morning test: 2 for shodan-sho, 4 for shodan, 2 for nidan, and 1 for sandan. All of them passed Test #3 was Sunday afternoon. Another 9 candidates: 8 for shodan-sho and 1 for shodan. All passed That's a total of 24 newly promoted black belts over the course of 2 days. With the newly minted instructors from Saturday we were able to run the tests pretty quickly, since for certain aspects of the test our CI wants a minimum of 3 evaluators for each candidate; 9 members of the board means we can have 3 pairs at a time performing bunkai, kotekitae, or yakusoku kumite at the same time. And of course... the requisite photos!

Living here in Avalanche Country, I had to adopt them as my second-favorite team. So I gotta say #LetsGoAvs and #GoAvsGo. In any case it will be a really good series, even if several of the top players on both sides have been taking a beating through the first 2 rounds.

Judo operates off the principle of kuzushi, or off-balancing. So if you're attempting to perform a throw on someone, they have to be unbalanced to a certain degree. If someone is leaning forward, that leaves them prime for certain hip throws or shoulder throws. If they're unbalanced to the rear, then that opens up certain other throws. One element that I've seen demonstrated with regard to aikido throws is the distraction. For example, if someone has your wrist and has it *tight*, the easiest way to get them to loosen up is to hit them. Not necessarily hard either -- a light slap to the abdomen will cause the nominal attacker to tighten up to protect the abdomen and loosen his grip on your wrist, which gives you enough freedom of movement to perform your technique without a lot of resistance from your opponent. The same principle applies to Judo throws. For example, in one of our two-person drills the attacker comes in with an overhead strike; our response is to receive/redirect the attack, drop down for an elbow strike to the solar plexus, and a backfist strike to the maxilla (right on the upper lip below the nose). We then finish the opponent off with an o-soto-gari. However, many other judo throws can be performed at this point, such as ippon seionage, harai-goshi, or even hiza garuma. The key is to unbalance the opponent, which in this case is performed by one or more strikes.

It's been awhile since I posted a test report, and I'll have two coming up within a week!. This past Saturday I tested for yonkyu (brown belt) in Matayoshi Kobudo. It was a test of only 2 candidates (they had also had a test the prior week) -- Tim (testing for green belt/shichikyu) and me. Since our kobudo tests are cumulative, the test started out with performing bo no hojo undo (all 3 levels, in random order), sai no hojo undo (randomly), and tonkua no hojo undo (randomly). The new material I tested on was bo no hojo undo bunkai, which consists of performing all 3 levels, both attacking and defending. Each technique has a specific attack and defense associated with it, and you're required to perform each in sequence. I demonstrated with our CI as my training partner, and he wanted me to perform the techniques in a specific way. My main concern during the test was in dialing back the power and intensity I was putting into each technique to ensure I was able to finish the test without being completely gassed. The good news is that I passed, but I received quite a bit of feedback that I'll need to address before my next test: - My (bo) gedan harai uke needs to adjust its pathing to "catch" the opponent's weapon better - When performing (sai) chudan osae uke, I need to drop my weight onto the sai more, and the sai prongs should be vertical, not horizontal. - My (bo) gedan yoko uke needs to be strong from top to bottom, not just the bottom. This also applies to the chudan nagashi uchi / gedan yoko uke / jodan nanamae uchi sequence - When performing the (tonkua) chudan tsuki / jodan harai uke / jodan yoko uchi / jodan uchi, when I raise up the (opposing) arm to allow the tonkua to go underneath, I need to visualize that as a block. So I have a lot of things to work on, but I have time to do it. I think the new element on the next test is the kata tsushi no kon. Also, this coming Saturday I'll be testing for my Uechi-Ryu sandan and shihan-dai license.

For a second I thought you were referring to the "gray belt" as the black belt that you've been wearing for so long it completely fades to gray/white.

As I was getting ready to head home from my test prep class last night, one of our students showed me that the Avs had just tied it up 3-3 with less than a minute remaining. When I got home I flipped on the game just in time to watch overtime. I was still a bit winded from the class, but definitely had enough energy for a good solid "woohoo" when the Avs won.

We celebrate members' birthdays. If you attend class on your birthday (and let it be known), then your birthday present is that the entire class gets to do push-ups equal to your current age. Last year we had to do 40 push-ups for our CI's birthday. Fortunately this year my birthday lands on a Sunday.

The only games I've really been able to watch so far were a couple of the Avs/Kings games and the 2OT Stars/Wild game. Right now I'm cheering for the Avs and Stars, since my Blues did not make it into the playoffs this year (typical slow start issues that they have every single <bleeping> year). In the Avs/Kings series, both goalies have been playing amazing hockey, making the opposing team work for each and every goal scored. Definitely playoff hockey at its finest!

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.