aurik

I have an area about that big in my basement covered with tatami tiles. I think they have just about the right amount of give for me, and the price wasn't too bad when I got them.

My goal for this year is to be able to do 49 pushups before my birthday (in July).

From my personal experience, the vast majority of the adults at our school also have kids in the school. That can happen in a couple of different ways: they sign the kid up and then the adult decides to try it and really likes it, or they sign up together (as something to do together as a family), or the adult is a student and their kid wants to join along. The vast majority I've seen fall into the first 2 categories. Of our adult black belts, almost all of them have either been training since they were kids or they have kids that are (or were) enrolled. So I guess what I'm suggesting is if you teach the kids, the adults may follow.

So yesterday was a REALLY good day. Not just a good day. One of the best days at the dojo I've had in a VERY long time. It started out in the morning when I got my first dose of the COVID vaccine. Colorado has recently opened up the vaccine to everyone over 50, and those from 16-49 who have one contributing factor. I'm overweight (which is a contributing factor), and I'm definitely going to use that to get my shot ASAP. I've already got my second dose scheduled for late April. So far my only side-effects are a slightly sore shoulder, which is to be expected. My wife took Zach to his classes, and one of the things Zach told me was "Sensei kicked me in the face". He said that it was because he didn't block correctly, and I have a lot of faith in our CI, but I figured I'd bring that up to him. Our Sensei mentioned how he basically put his foot up beside their face and tried to get the kids to actually block it, and he also worked with the kids on how to keep your balance when your opponent disrupts your kicks. Today's class was more "cerebral" than physically exhausting. We've been training for the past year in a "no-touch" environment -- for example when we train two-person drills, it's more like a choreographed dance than a karate demonstration. Today that changed (to a certain degree). He started out the class talking about using two-handed blocks. Our most common block, the mawashi-uke, is typically done with the blocking hand making a inward-to-outward funnel motion that finishes with the hand reset in our typical kamae. At least that's how it's done at lower kyu levels in drills and all kyu levels in kata. Well, at rokkyu/gokyu or so, he expects us to add a supporting hand to the block in our drills -- the block begins with the supporting hand guiding the attack off the centerline, and finishes with the blocking hand finishing the block and (optimally) grabbing the opponent at or above the elbow, and then when the defender returns to sanchin, that action can potentially pull the attacker off-balance. He had us work this a bit, and then he started striking at us (for the first time in over a year) -- depending on how well the student did, he'd up his game and see if he could tag them. For me the hardest part was remembering to reset my supporting hand -- which is important if there's a second punch coming right after the first one. We then worked on blocking kicks. The first way he mentioned (useful for front kicks) is to take a step back, use one hand to guide the attacking foot partway off the centerline, and then use the other hand to finish moving the foot out of the way and (optimally) catch the attacker's heel to drag him off-balance a bit. We worked that a bit, with him trying harder and harder to tag us. The nice thing about this technique is as long as you can get that backwards step in, even if you slightly flub the hand technique, you've backed up enough that you're out of his "power band" so he can't really can't hit you hard. We then worked parts of our kyu kumite drill against him to get us used to actually working with an opponent disrupting our techniques a bit. For one thing, when you actually have an opponent blocking your techniques, it tends to slow things down a bit. One of the things I'd struggle with when working my drills against young, fast opponents in a no-contact environment is that I could do the blocking technique easy enough, but the subsequent techniques I'd be struggling to keep up with them. However, when that block disrupts their technique a bit, that also slows them down so that I can keep up. The next drill we worked was our kicking drill. This drill gives the defender a chance to really disrupt his opponent. The defender has 3 blocks in this one, a mawashi uke, a crane block (raise the defending leg and place the same-side elbow atop the knee to basically block your entire body from knee to head), and the sweeping block. Our CI mentioned that when used against a front kick, you can use the mawashi-uke to really disrupt the attacker -- basically you step back into a low stance, which takes your body out of your opponent's "power band" for the kick, and then you catch the kick by stopping it with one hand and then pulling the other hand up under the heel. Again, this only works because you're backing just out of your opponent's range. Then you stand back up into sanchin, and depending on how much you dislike your opponent, you either drop the foot, shuck it off to the side slightly, or violently push him backwards. With the crane block, he mentioned how you can also control how much you disrupt your opponent depending on whether you step back (allowing your opponent to get the full kick off), stand your ground (preventing him from getting the kick up to full power), or step in (possibly preventing the kick from happening at all). These are things he'd talked about in the past, but again with COVID we haven't been able to touch each other with our drills, so this was a good refresher. When I had the chance to be the attacker, my kicks were noticeably better than when I do them against the air, and as the defender, I took the advice of "disrupting your opponent" to heart, doing my best to throw him off his game, standing my ground on most of the kicks, and even stepping in when he did the spinning hook kick. He then discussed that when you're actually touching each other, Dan Kumite becomes basically a big flow drill. He took several elements out of it to illustrate how the defender's actions help set up the attacker's next attack and so forth. Since I had only really been working this in a no-touch environment, this was entirely new information for me. He worked with our nidan to illustrate a few of the techniques, and then he worked with me on one of the other techniques, and showed me that if I pulled the attacker's arm down just so after blocking his shuto uchi, then that would both set me up for a roundhouse kick and him up for his cross block. It was probably my best day at the dojo since COVID hit -- the sensation of actually attacking and defending again with the "smack" of striking and blocking is something I have sorely missed. On another note, something else I've apparently sorely missed is our kote kitae and ashi kitae (forearm and leg/foot conditioning). I've been trying to keep up with as I can remember, but there were a couple months where I didn't do any at all and I'm definitely feeling it. The good news is that our governor recently announced that the vaccine should be available to everyone over 16 by mid-April, so once our adult students start getting vaccinated, we can let things go back to a new normal.

At our dojo (and satellite dojos), no one instructor can promote students. An instructor will inform a student when he is ready for testing, but all testing is done in front of a testing board, which (in typical years) consists of 3 or more dan-level instructors or assistant instructors. Each instructor is responsible for evaluating a group of students -- generally NOT their own students. This is done to keep things above-board and ensure consistency in standards. Kyu testing cycles occur each month. For dan-level promotions, these are done twice a year after a test prep cycle. They are done in front of a testing board as well, but then the promotion packets are sent to our organization's headquarters, and our organization's head makes the final decisions. Promotion boards for advanced dan grades (5th and above) are done in person by the head of our organization (James Thompson, 10th degree) and any sufficiently advanced dan practitioners present at the time.

Welcome to the forum, hunter!

So over the last couple of weeks I've been focusing on strengthening my shoulders/upper body on my off-days. I've been starting with a moderate number of push-ups, adding a couple per session (goal is to hit 49 by my birthday in July -- more on that later). I have then been working my sanchin kata with kettlebells. For Monday and Wednesday, I used a 25lb kettlebell, and for each strike in sanchin, I'd press the kettlebell out to full extension, pause, and then bring it back. On Monday I was unable to complete the full kata before my shoulders shouted "ENOUGH!". On Wednesday, I completed the full kata, and on Friday I did a second run through where instead of a single 25lb kettlebell, I used a pair of 15lb kettlebells, and alternated lifting them to my chin with each step. This Monday, I did the push-up routine followed by Sanchin with a 35lb kettlebell. I was able to make it through the entire kata, with my shoulders begging and screaming for relief towards the end. I felt pretty good at the end of that. Zach, however saw what I was doing, and asked if I could use him in the same way (he's about 60lbs). So I figured I'd give it a try. I picked him up under the armpits easy enough, but as soon as I got him to about half extension, my arms said "uh, nope!". Well, that's something to work towards. Well now we get to training in class. Last night our CI broke out the weighted jars and the chi ishi again. Unfortunately my shoulders were still recovering from the beating I gave them yesterday. Fortunately I think he saw the look of "oh crap" on my face when he went for the weighted jars and elected to skip me on that. When we did the chi ishi work, I was able to work from the heavy end for the forearm work, but once we moved to the shoulder work, I had to move my grip up towards the lighter end. Last night we had a really small group -- only six students, so he had the higher ranks (4th kyu and up) working dan kumite with his wife, and he worked the other 3 students on the drills for their level. I'm starting to get pretty confident in the dan kumite and things are starting to flow a bit smoother. There are still areas I feel a bit awkward in, but I'm hoping those don't show as much as I feel them. We then finished by running through all the rank kata twice and called it a day. One thing I have noticed in the past couple weeks from working my shoulders so hard is how much stronger my strikes feel (to me). I'm now hearing a distinct "snap" when I'm wearing my gi and things just feel a lot faster and more powerful. I've got kettlebells ranging up to 28kg (62lbs), so I'll see how far I can get up there. The 16kg (35lb) feels massive when I try to hold it at arms length, so this may take quite awhile. It's the former powerlifter in me that wants to see how far I can push this Oh, and as for the 49 push-ups... our dojo has a tradition that if you come to class on your birthday, your "present" is to do a number of push-ups equal to your age. I'll be 49 this July, so there ya go Until next time!

At our school, everyone is expected to be able to teach to a certain degree. As a requirement for ranks above 6th kyu, a student must be able to lead the class in warmups and accessory exercises a certain number of times. Requirements for 3rd kyu and up include using the Japanese terms for these exercises. Furthermore, he tends to identify students that have natural abilities to teach. After our opening warmups/accessory exercises/sanchin, he generally breaks students up by rank groups, and he'll often assign one of these identified students to each rank to help them work their techniques required for rank. Also, when students are learning new material, he'll tend to ask these students to help teach the new material to them, and later in class he'll do spot checks to see how the students are learning and to answer any questions and provide corrections. He also has a formal assistant instructor/instructor program. A student can ask to be named an assistant instructor for any class for their rank or below, and then they'll be responsible to assist in the class. They'll also be given a log book and have additional training as part of the program. Dan level students can opt to pursue their Shidoin certification, which (I believe) is also one of the requirements for 5th dan and shihan license. Once a student has earned a Shidoin certification, he/she can start teaching at one of our satellite schools or look at opening their own satellite school.

Wow, has it really been over a month since I posted here? Time flies, but it's been a lot of the same. Things have changed a bit at the dojo -- as our county and state have moved down the COVID "danger scale" from red to orange to yellow, we've had more people attending in-person classes. He has been adding in new training tools from time to time, and adding in tools which we haven't used in awhile. One tool he's brought into play is the weighted jars. He has jars weighted at 10lbs or 5lbs, and we hold them and do Sanchin kata. For the 10lb (plastic) jar, you perform the Sanchin opening, then reach down, pick up the jar, and hold it as if you're in Sanchin kimae. At each count, you press the jar out ahead of you at a measured pace, retract it, and then step. Everytime you thrust in the kata, you do the same with the jar. This seems REALLY easy at first, but by the time you're done with the kata, your shoulders, lats, and pecs are definitely feeling it. After the second rep, things get REALLY tired. Another tool he's brought back is kick repetitions. We work as partners, one holding a hand pad and the other kicking. The first set we do one kick per count (generally front kicks, to a count of 5). The second set we do two kicks per count.-- snap kick up, touch the ground to reset, then kick again. He had us work our way up to five kicks per set, and by the end of them my legs were pretty much jell-o. He then told us that when he was training with Master Thompson, he'd work his way up to ten per count... and then back down to 1. The goal of this is to make your front kicks fast (and to increase your stamina, of course). He's also started using me more and more as an assistant instructor to a degree. For example, if I'm the only brown/black belt in the class, he'll have me work with the white belts on their technique exercises for part of the class, and then he'll work with me 1:1 on my kata. This past week, he did something I hadn't yet seen. He reserved about 15 minutes at the end of class for kata, and we'd start at kanshiwa (required for yellow belt ranks). He'd step us through the kata, and as soon as anyone made a mistake, he'd have us stop and restart. He wouldn't let the class progress to kanshu until no one made a mistake. I think we went through Kanshiwa about 6 times before were able to move on to Kanshu. Kanshu took about 4 times before we moved to Seichin. We ran Seichin another 3 times before running out of time. Training like that definitely works both the physical and mental aspects. On a slightly different note, my wife and I have both started a keto diet - she started last month and I started on Ash Wednesday for Lent. Hopefully this will help me kick-start some new weight loss goals for the year. My wife has to do it because she's trying to control her diabetes -- I probably should be doing it because I've gained more weight over COVID than is good for me. I'll keep y'all up to date on how things go on this. Until next time!

Uechi-Ryu has 3 main katas: sanchin, seisan, and sanseiryu. These are the original 3 katas that Kanbun Uechi learned in China and brought with him to Okinawa/Japan. Of those 3 kata, Sanchin is by far the core kata of Uechi-Ryu. We do have five other kata, but they were added later, to "bridge" the concepts/complexities between the 3 main kata. There is a saying in Uechi-Ryu -- "everything returns to Sanchin". Almost every one of our workouts begins with 3 things: Junbi undo (warmup exercises), hojo undo (accessory/supplemental exercises), and Sanchin kata. The principles of Sanchin kata guide everything in Uechi-Ryu katas. 75-90% of our katas are performed in Sanchin stance, and we are generally taught whenever we do a strike, our arms should "return to Sanchin". There's a video of one of Kanji Uechi's (Kanbun Uechi's great-grandson) seminars here: where the students are performing sanseiryu (the first 2 pairs) and seisan (the last pair). In more than one occasion, you'll see him quote "go back to sanchin" or "everything is in sanchin", with examples.

COVID has really kicked us in the nuts in terms of "the new normal", but it's also provided us with a number of unique opportunities that we might not usually have. For example, my CI is now running a variety of both in-person and online classes, and students can choose which model they are most comfortable with. We also occasionally have the opportunity to train virtually with his instructor (Master James Thompson) and other high-ranking instructors. As someone who has trained with multiple schools concurrently (in the same style, primarily due to work travel), you'll need to be aware that different instructors have different expectations of certain techniques, and will do things in different ways. The farther apart the styles, organizations, and lineages are, the more differences you'll find in the techniques. For example, when I was visiting California for work, I trained with a group of fellow Uechi-Ryu stylists who were part of a different organization. Their core kata and drills were the same, but a lot of their accessory exercises were different, and they taught certain techniques differently. This can be advantageous to see techniques taught in different ways, but you'll also need to keep in mind how your current instructor wants to see things done. Now back to your point: COVID won't last forever, and I assume you're going to want to go back to in-person training eventually. With that being said, I'd recommend finding a school near you that you think is a good match for you (again, hard to do in this day and age), and then look for an online resource that teaches a style as close to what you can find locally as you can. That way you won't have to relearn your techniques nearly as much. I hope this helps!

Shime in this context is a concept specific to Uechi-Ryu (and possibly a couple of other Okinawan styles). One might interpret it as "focus". The idea is that the instructor is checking a student's focus while performing the Sanchin kata by pulling, pushing, and/or striking the student in a number of key areas. Per my sensei, he's primarily looking to see how much force it takes to make the student move, and that they are flexing the appropriate muscle groups to protect themselves. One thing I learned quite early is NOT to push back against the instructor, but to focus your energies DOWNWARD into the floor. The one time I pushed back against one of our instructors pushing against me, she shouted "A-HA", and gave a quick tug on my belt and my stance came completely undone. Here is a video of Shinjo sensei performing Shime testing on his brother at a demonstration:

Happy holidays everyone! I'm hoping everyone's 2021 is better than 2020!

We wear two patches on our gis. Our style patch has the kanji for Uechi-Ryu written vertically, with a green "COLORADO" underneath. On the left sleeve, we wear our organization patch, which has the modified offset red double-oval of the Okinawan flag in the center. On top of the flag, it has a large black SANCHIN in kanji. Circumscribing the double oval above, we have the kanji for Uechi-Ryu Karate-Do, and underneath we have the name of our organization (in kanji) Kokusai Kyokai. Since we're the only member of our organization (or Uechi-Ryu school for that matter) in the Denver area, it pretty much uniauely identifies us.

I'm sure my CI appreciates the compliment! In the year since I posted this, we've moved to a new dojo, and Zach and I have both gone through a couple of testing cycles. Zach is now a 5th kyu, and about a week and a half ago, I passed my 3rd kyu test: The new dojo is roughly 2-3x the size of the old dojo, and has three different training areas. The two downstairs areas (combined) are roughly 50% larger than the previous dojo, and they're now covered in Zebra mats. There is also an upstairs area, which is about 75% the size of the old dojo, and he put the bamboo floors from the old dojo in there. Due to the COVID pandemic, the previous tenant had to evacuate, and our CI was able to get a lease on this space for about the same as he was paying for his previous space.

The past week (and a half) has been a pretty good week for me. Last Tuesday, I got to work with our nidan and a couple other brown belts on Seisan kata (required for shodan). I'll have a year and a half to work on this (and its bunkai) before I'm eligible to test for shodan. The good news is that I've seen this done enough times that it already pretty much makes sense to me. There are only a couple of new sequences in the kata, so I'm not finding it horribly difficult to memorize. Today we had a much smaller class, so it was just me and our nidan working together for seisan -- I am now able to mostly get through it without too much trouble. I'm not yet ready to try the two jumps due to arthritis in my knees, but I'll try to get there eventually. In any case, he told me that I'm starting to look pretty good considering I've only been working this kata for a week. Today was actually a much more cerebral class than usual -- our sensei did a lot of talking and we did a lot less than usual working out. One of the things he mentioned to me was what I needed to focus on for nikyu -- seisan kata, sanchin (with shime testing), and either sparring (if we can do that with where we are COVID-wise) or bag combinations. I then asked him what he was actually looking for when he did shime testing in sanchin, and he walked through everything he usually checks, tests. I mean, I've seen him actually do it (and felt it) before, but it was very enlightening to hear him go through the different checks he does, and what he's looking for in each of them. While he was discussing this, he had our newest student stand in sanchin, and he was demonstrating some of the different checks he does. I hope that the new student can remember a lot of the things that our sensei said, but honestly I think when I was at his level, I wouldn't have had the frame of reference to remember everything. In any case it was not so much an "a-ha" moment, but it was one of those discussions where everything you've seen in sanchin so far gets distilled in one place. For where I am right now, I think it was a very valuable talk.

One of our Dan Kumite drills has a response to a right roundhouse punch. The defender does a two-hand block/strike to the attacker's bicep and shoulder, then drops to a shiko-dachi (low stance), pressing one hand into the juncture where the inner thigh meets the groin, using the left hand to scoop the attacker's right leg. Attacker goes down, defender stands up holding the ankle, then does a sokuto-geri to the attacker's groin. You can see it at about 1:16 here (in slow-motion) Another video with my sensei is here:

I've you've seen the Season 3 trailer, it strongly hints at this in a couple of places. I have to say that I've really enjoyed watching Johnny change as a character. He has certainly grown and matured quite a bit in his 2 seasons on Cobra Kai, and I hope he grows even more in Season 3.

Our CI has moved to a hybrid model -- he runs some of his classes via Zoom, and he also has in-person classes (with restrictions). He has different pricing plans for the different (in-person vs online) options. He prefers to do gradings in person whenever possible, but he also understands parents' and students' concerns about the pandemic. The pandemic has been particularly hard on his brown belt students, because in order to advance to 2nd kyu or above, you have to spar on your test. With our current COVID restrictions, sparring or any form of contact between students is essentially verboten. What he has done instead is he's modified the curriculum for 3rd kyu and above. Traditionally, he wouldn't start teaching students seisan (required for shodan) until 1st kyu, and he would expect students to take roughly a year to gain enough competence before testing. Now he is teaching seisan at 3rd kyu, and he will be able to reduce the time-in-rank requirements at ikkyu because of this. Hopefully now that a vaccine is starting to become available, this means that an end to COVID is in sight. However, it's still a long ways ahead of us.

Congratulations, BalkanDragon, and welcome to the forum! COVID won't last forever, but the skills and knowledge you gain in your MA journey can. You've got a potentially long journey ahead of you -- you'll have some days of frustration where you just don't think you can get a technique down, and you'll have some days where things just suddenly "click" and you go "A-HA". Keep in mind that the "A-HA" moments don't happen without the struggle, and they're so much more rewarding after the struggle. Keep moving forward, and keep training!

Oh, I may have misspoke. We start conditioning like that (at MUCH lower intensities) in the very first classes. At the low to mid-kyu levels, we condition the forearms, the outer calf, and the outer thighs. We are also taught to keep the abs, pecs, lats, and traps tight throughout our sanchin kata -- at green and brown belt levels (and up), our sensei would normally test your shime (focus) by pressing/striking you in these various locations. The expectation is that as you progress, you should be able to tolerate harder and harder blows without injury. However, it isn't until the brown/black belt levels that we start conditioning the actual shin bones, inner thighs, and inner calves. At each of our testing cycles (in a normal year), we're expected to demonstrate fundamental kote kitae techniques -- at my test for gokyu (the last test I had under "normal" conditions), I demonstrated with our CI, since there was no one of my size/rank to work with. He was hitting me hard enough that the audience was hearing/wincing.

Congratulations everyone!

Congratulations! (if somewhat belately)

Advanced students (brown/black belt level) are expected to condition their shins and insteps for this very reason. We would usually do these type of drills at the beginning of every class. Unfortunately with the pandemic, we can't do them right now. Here are a few examples: The shin bone itself, though, is usually something you don't start conditioning until brown/black belt level.

Yeah, I've been on the other side of that before -- last spring (before COVID happened), I was sparring with one of the older teens when he hit me with a massive roundhouse. He telegraphed it pretty badly, so I just calmly lifted my leg for a crane block and caught it on my shin a few inches below the knee. I got a decent bruise on my shin, and he bruised the heck out of his foot. Of course, a few minutes later he did the exact same thing... Needless to say we ended that sparring match fairly early.