aurik

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.

So the last couple weeks have had their ups and downs. Last Tuesday (before the US thanksgiving), our CI had us practicing kicks (with bags, our partners holding them), and I was starting to get really into things. I was getting some really strong, high right-footed mawashi-geris up there, and then... WHACK! My partner had let his elbow peek out on the other side of the bag, and my foot was just past the bag and solidly impacted his elbow. I don't *THINK* I broke anything, since I can still walk on it, but it feels pretty tight trying to flex the ankle in certain directions, and it is VERY tender to the touch. So this past Tuesday when he had us do bag work for our kicks, I decided to focus on my left kicks. He's not particular about HOW we do our kicks in the adult classes -- he wants us to find a technique and rythm that works for us. So, I did a lot of left kicks. My left front kicks are so-so, the side kicks are okay, and my left roundhouses were actually pretty strong. Left crescent kicks were okay as well. Now the spinning hook kick and spinning back kicks... well, I really don't want to talk about them Which means, of course I need to work on them a LOT more. Now on to the really good news. Today I tested for (and passed) brown belt (sankyu). He generally is in a state of continual evaluation for us, especially for those of us progressing to higher kyu and dan grades. So today's test was fairly straightforward. He had us do our hojo undo at random (still in English for now). He then had us perform Sanchin twice. The other student was testing for gokyu, so he had us work through all of the kicks and combinations for the kicking exercise, and then we did the kicking exercise a couple of times (he had me call out the kicks on one of them). He then sent several of the students off to work on rank material, and then we did our dan kumite drill. We first did the drill just in the mirror, then he asked me to demonstrate it against him -- (with appropriate social distancing). For sankyu he really was only looking for the attacking side, which I did without any hiccups. I then demonstrated the defending side -- I had a couple of hiccups here though. Again, that wasn't required for the rank I'm testing for so I wasn't too worried. Finally we got to kata. We started out with everyone doing kanshiwa, then he sent off the yellow belts to practice that on their own. We next did kanshu as a group, and then he had the other candidate demonstrate on her own. He had some corrections for her, especially on her nukite attacks -- he wanted to see her use more hip, less shoulder on those. We then moved on to seichin. We first demonstrated this as a group, and then he had me perform it solo. During the kata, I caught myself in two substantial errors (or I should say, I realized them as soon as I made them) - first of all, I let my center of gravity get too high on the final crane block. I didn't lose my balance, but I had to hold that position for far longer than is necessary while I waited for me to regain my balance). Finally, on the last sumo stance/elbow strike combination, I did not hold that position as long as is generally accepted -- of course, this was right after I made the previous error so my brain was a bit flustered. So when it came time for my corrections, our Sensei told me "don't hold that leg up position so long. Make it look just like the other two in the kata". -- I didn't mention to him that I was struggling with balance at that time He also mentioned how the last sequence should be three separate techniques. His final correction was regarding the side-to-side blocks in the beginning of the kata -- apparently I haven't been extending them as far as I should, so that's something else to work on. He then handed things over to his father, who talked to me about the difference between hard and soft techniques, and at brown belt, they want to see us finding the balance between hard and soft techniques. He used those side-to-side blocks as an example, showing how I was doing them (hard and enunciated) versus how they can be done (soft, flowing and kung fu-ey). In the end, our Sensei said that we both passed, and he wanted to see us working on those corrections before our next testing. Here are the obligatory pics:

The handles he's got are about 24" long. I'd imagine a 10lb sledge would work as a substitute if you've already got one. Otherwise, it's cheaper to just make your own -- get a cheap plastic pot, some concrete mix, some nails/screws, and an appropriately thick dowel. You can do a batch of them for less than 10 bucks each. There are several videos on YouTube on how to do it: is one.

Congratulations on your 3rd degree!

In our organization, all gradings are technical. However, there is a huge difference between godan and higher dan grades. At Godan, you are tested over the entire curriculum. At rokudan and higher, you are only tested on the three core kata (sanchin, seisan, and sanseiryu).

Our CI won't invite someone to test unless he feels that they're ready. During the test, if a student makes mistakes, he has three options: 1) If the mistakes are minor and he's testing for a fairly junior rank, he'll pass the student with comments. 2) If the mistakes are a bit more serious, he may pass the student but note in their file that they'll need to spend an extra month or two in their new grade before they're eligible to test again, or 3) outright fail the student. He doesn't fail students often, but then he also usually does pre-tests the week prior to a grading to see if students have a sufficient grasp of the material before grading. Dan gradings are a different story. They're only done twice per year, and you must complete (and pass) a 3 month test prep cycle before grading -- if he gives you corrections during that test prep cycle and you can't incorporate them into your technique, you may need to wait for the next grading. Additionally, each section of a Dan grading is scored, and if your total score isn't above a certain threshold, you don't pass. I've not heard of people failing dan gradings, but I have heard of people who sustained injuries in the cycle leading up to the dan gradings and were unable to test.

I'm going to guess they are about 10lbs. They're not all that heavy if you hold them close to the weighted end. However, if you hold them towards the free end of the handle, then the leverage multiplies that effective weight by several times. I'm guessing that since we can't do our traditional kote kitae conditioning, he's going to use these other tools to help us with our conditioning.

Our CI is planning his annual dojo tournament for December'ish. Each division shows up at a specified time, kata only. I think he also plans on doing an online-only tournament for his online-only students. His instructors will do the judging. As far as the local/regional tournaments, as far as I know they've all been cancelled for the year.

This week has been pretty interesting, in both good and bad ways. First, the bad. My neighbor has COVID, and he is recovering from a pretty bad case of it. He apparently was in the hospital for 6 days, and he is still on supplementary oxygen (18 days into it). I haven't seen him lately, since he's been cooped up in his guest bedroom, but my wife saw him briefly yesterday while dropping off their kids' schoolwork. He's still looking pretty weak. This guy is/was a West Point graduate and (until now) has been doing the Ragnar relay race each year. He's definitely a lot fitter than most mid-40's guys out there. And he got whammied by it. So it can really hit anyone, and hard. The good news is he's now on the mend though. This is the second person in our close circle who has been hit by COVID -- my sister-in-law got it last month. So as a result, most of the counties around us are moving to level red in restrictions. No more indoor dining at restaurants, no gatherings with more than 2 families, and gyms must drop to 10% of capacity, or 10 people per room. Fortunately our dojo has 2 rooms (an upstairs and a downstairs), so it shouldn't affect us too much. One statistic that scared the hell out of me, though. In Boulder (which is just 10 miles to the east of us), if you put 10 unrelated people in a room, there is now a 43% chance that at least one of those people has COVID. Scary stuff. So our family is locking things down as much as we can. The last thing we need is for our son to have to quarantine because one of us got COVID, and frankly both my wife and I are likely at higher risk. We recently got ourselves a chest freezer, and we'll be doing a Costco run to stock it up this weekend, and then we'll stay at home as much as we can and wait things out. Fortunately since our son is in a charter school, he can still do in-person learning. They've only had 4 confirmed cases of COVID at his school, and they all were infected from outside the school, so I have to commend all of the parents, staff, and teachers for that. Now on to the MA stuff. At some point over the past few weeks, my sensei came into a set of chi ishi, or "stone mallets". In this case, they're basically a brooimstick with a concrete weight on one end. He got them out last night and had us work with them a bit. The nice thing about them is that you can adjust their effective weight to your own strength by choosing where on the handle you hold them. Hold it right below the weight, and they're pretty light. Hold them at the far end from the weight, and they're brutally heavy. I picked somewhere closer to the far end for most of the exercises. And they seemed a good heavy weight at first. And after a couple sets, my shoulders were screaming at me, telling me how much of an idiot I am. But today they're just sore in a good way, telling me I gave them a good workout. Also, our CI is having us do (kata) tournament prep. Working with us on how a tournament kata is different from the traditional kata. He had intended to do a tournament around April of this year (and bought all the trophies with the year 2020 on them), so he's looking at doing a tournament in December. He's thinking of basically having each division coming in at different times for their part of the tourney, and of course there would be no sparring this year. But it'll be fun.

Yeah, we're having a huge COVID resurgence here, too. Fortunately we have enough space in the dojo to do in-person training with 10 students (per room). I'm glad to hear that you're still training despite all of the craziness going on out there. Keep up the good work!

Indeed it does! There's a running joke in our dojo. By itself, "Keri" means kick. When used with an adjective, it becomes "Mae-Geri", "Sokusen Geri", "Mawashi-Geri", etc. "Geri" by itself means "diarrhea", and the Okinawan masters will laugh at you if you try to use it (by itself) to say kick.

It doesn't need to be a high hop, but the idea is to quickly change stance while the opponent is preoccupied with your hand work, so you can do a (rear) roundhouse kick with the foot formerly in the front. Quickly getting my center of gravity high enough to do that switch is where my challenge is.

Latest update: I'm still making good progress on Seichin. I'm pretty comfortable with performing it with a count, but I still have a ways to go on it performed solo. Last Saturday our Sensei had us perform kata solo in front of him, and he told me it looked pretty good (with no corrections). That almost never happens, unless he's planning on testing you soon and doesn't want to mess up your groove. Also, since we can't spar as a general rule, he's developed some sparring combinations he wants us to practice -- he will be including these on tests for advanced brown belts (nikyu, ikkyu), since it doesn't look like the pandemic is going away anytime soon. Most of them are pretty straightforward, but I'm struggling with one of them -- it consists of front jab, reverse punch, front cross, then a hop to switch feet followed with the roundhouse. With my size and knee issues, the hop is what makes things hard on me. Soooo, it means I'll need to practice it a LOT more. Since this week is a testing week, (and based upon the lack of feedback I received over the weekend), I asked my sensei if I was testing this coming week. He replied with a long discussion of how politics come into play with shodan gradings, he wants to make sure that when he presents my case to our organization head, he wants to make sure that there isn't any pushback. So, test next month. But he said that based upon where I am and how I'm progressing, he's pretty confident I'll be testing for Shodan in about a year and a half (barring serious illness or injury of course). I don't mind the wait -- I just wanted to know so I could prep apprpriately. Also, I think it's good for Zach to see me having to wait longer between gradings (and look at the bright side of it), because his gradings are also going to get farther and farther apart. So all in all, I'm happy with where I am now, and I know what I need to work on over the next couple weeks and months. Thank to all of you for your encouragement, it's really been helping!

Generally our nukite conditioning includes Sanchin kata, which we perform thrice in every class. During the entire kata, you're expected to keep your nukite tight, and he periodically will come around (pre-COVID) to apply pressure to your hands to evaluate the strength of your nukite. Also, during hojo undo, we're expected to keep our kamae tight, which results in a strong isometric contraction of the flexors and extensors in the forearm. We also occasionally will do fingertip push-ups as well. As far as how is MY nukite conditioning? As I mentioned, I'm comfortable striking a heavy bag, but I am not ready to try breaking boards with a nukite. I've seen videos of Uechi-Ryu masters doing so, but they've gone through a lot more hand/finger conditioning than I'm willing to do.

At our dojo, a student above a certain rank can ask to serve as an assistant instructor for a class. Generally if the class is intended for a given set of ranks, the assistant instructor should be at least one grade above that. (e.g, a beginner's class is typically 10th kyu - 8th kyu. The assistant instructor should be at least 7th kyu). In such a situation, the students will refer to the assistant instructor as "Sempai" (as opposed to sensei). We also have a certain set of classes that are all ranks (and sometimes all ages). In this case, our sensei will break us up into groups to work on rank-specific drills, and he'll often ask a senior student to work with his/her juniors on their techniques. For example, last weekend he asked me to work with a couple of different groups of junior students on their rank material. He then rotated through the different groups of students to answer questions and offer corrections. Towards the end of class, he worked with me on my own rank material, so in the end, I got to help teach (and reinforce my learning of) most of the white/yellow belt material as well as my own rank material.

Congrats!