aurik

Another couple weeks gone, and some more "a-ha" moments. I've now been training at the dojo for a little over a year. Why is that important, you ask? Well, after students have been training for about a year, our Sensei figures they're conditioned enough to seriously test their focus and conditioning in Sanchin. Now last summer when I was in the youth+adult class at the community center, I was feeling pretty good about myself, because the (female) instructor there would hit me as hard as she could in the forearms, abs, and quads. Last night I had my eyes opened -- our sensei hits like a freight train, and his knuckles and forearms feel like baseball bats. I held up pretty well, but I'm more sore on the forearms and traps than usual. It looks like I need to step up that aspect of my training. I'm continuing to have these a-ha moments during training, and especially watching others train as well. For example, our Sensei was explaining something to a student about one of the moves in Seichin (our kata for brown belt), about how after certain strikes he needs to return to the guard position, especially when we're doing kata with him counting the movements. I immediately made the connection to a similar movement in Kanshu (the kata which I'll be tested on for green belt). He confirmed my questions. Also last weekend, Zach competed in his second tournament. He competed in both sparring and kata. Our sensei ran a special class the night prior to help kids prep and gave Zach a few pointers. Well, the next morning, Zach did the best kata I've ever seen him do. He lost to his opponent, but frankly I didn't care, and I told him that. He got in front of those judges, and applied all of the pointers our Sensei asked him to do. I was very proud of him! He also did much better in sparring than I've seen him do before. He got in 3 points against his opponent, but his opponent got in a couple of head kicks, which frankly Zach has never had to deal with before -- in our normal sparring classes, the head is only a valid target for brown belts and above. When Zach saw that he had lost, he cried a lot... but since he got a bye for his first round, he did end up with a third place in sparring: https://i.imgur.com/Qrd7wHK.jpg. Our sensei heard what had happened (his fiancee' was coaching Zach while the CI was coaching other students), and told Zach that he lost a LOT of times (and cried a lot from losing) when he was growing up. He gave zach a lot of encouragement. One thing my wife appreciated about this tournament was that they DIDN'T give participation medals. One thing *I* appreciated about the tournament was that things were much better controlled than the first tournament Zach went to (ie, the number of kids that were getting hit way too hard). It also seemed a much "friendlier" type of tournament. The biggest reason I didn't compete in this tournament is that from the way I read the schedule, it looked like my division would be late in the afternoon, and I didn't think it would be fair for Zach to have to sit around there all day long. It turns out that if I had competed, 1) I would've been in one of the first divisions up, and 2) they ended up combining the divisions such that men's 36-49 was a single division. I would've been competing against my sensei. There's some other good news as well. Zach and I are both scheduled to test this coming Saturday (him for 8th kyu, me for 6th), so please wish us luck!

Aiki jujutsu / shorinji kempo 1 shuri-ryu / judo / kobudo 1 ATA TKD 1 Uechi-ryu 1

So this week I'm out in San Jose for work again, and I'm working out with some of the Okikukai West people. It's always fun and interesting to train with a different set of people, because you get to see the techniques from different perspectives. On Tuesday, I had the opportunity to train with a handful of people led by an 8th degree. We worked hojo undo, Sanchin, Kanshiwa, kotekitae, and their version of yakusoku kumite. In my sanchin and kanshiwa, I got some good but subtle corrections on my stances and stepping. It seems that sometimes I have been pivoting on my heel instead of the ball of my foot. Also, the instructor was wanting me to drop my weight down in Sanchin to help with my stability. The new material I got to work on was their version of the yakuosku kumite. The other student who was trying to teach me was aparently fairly new to the drills himself (and the instructor was focused on working with one of the white belts), but I found a really good video version of it from Chip Quimby Sensei that I was able to follow later that night. So I'm still training, still moving forward, and having a real blast while doing it.

Welcome Maria! Glad to have you here.

Our sensei had an opportunity to drill this into some of his students last night. Periodically, instead of having a normal class, he has a "clean and workout day". For the beginner's class (white/yellow belts), he asked them to take a Clorox wipe and wipe down the sparring gear and pads. When one of the kids heard what he was being asked, he shouted "This is humiliating". Our sensei then used that as a teaching moment, and talked about how it is supposed to teach humility, and how karate begins and ends with respect. He then told them that in Japan, the students were expected to clean the dojo every single day, and that in a way this is their equipment, since they are using it everyday. He then had them do multiple rounds of push-ups, sit-ups, wall squats, and a few other conditioning/strengthening exercises. I was super proud of Zach, he didn't complain at all, and you could see him trying even when he wasn't strong enough to finish a set. He always started the set and kept trying.

So at the end of last month, Zach and I sat down and decided that we were going back to the main dojo. The wife and I worked it out so I can go at least twice a week, and it's pretty easy to get Zach from school to the dojo, since it is literally right across the street from his school. In the couple of months, a few things have changed at the dojo. For starters, there are about 5 new white belts in the adult (technically 13+) class, including a couple of teenagers and one adult who is about my size. I've been finding I've been having quite a few of these "a-ha" moments over the past few weeks, and after working on it for about half of class, I felt that my Kanshu kata has drastically improved, and I'm starting to get much more fluid with my kyu kumite drills. Over the past weekend, our instructor brought one of his instructors over, Itokazu Seisho Sensei (9th dan uechi-ryu, 10th dan Matayoshi kobudo), Last weekend, he ran a 2-day kobudo seminar and my sensei was testing for his yondan in kobudo, This past Tuesday he also did a Uechi-Ryu seminar. It was pretty intense -- we did quite a bit of sanchin (including focus testing). He took one student's belt, wrapped it around his ankle, and tried to pull the ankle out from underneath him. We also saw a new way to do Kanshiwa bunkai, and he taught us the kata Daini Seisan, which is very similar to Kanshu, but with a different beginning and ending. At the end, we also did some advanced kote kitae -- he had us working all 5 points on the legs instead of just the outer calf and quads. All in all, it was a great class and I'm glad I went. He may come back next year and if he does I definitely will go.

In my first school, anyone who earned the title "shihan" was entitled to wear a red/white belt, and upper level yudansha (9th/10th dan) wore a solid red belt, and our Soke wore a solid red belt with a gold stripe around the middle. I've also seen other schools where you wear a roman numeral (1-IIII) for first-fourth degree, and stars to indicate "master" ranks (5th degree upwards). My current style uses a solid black belt for first-fifth dan, a belt with one gold stripe on each end for renshi (6th dan), 2 stripes for kyoshi, and 3 stripes for hanshi. Of course, other organizations within our style do things differently. Soooo, I guess as others has said, "it depends".

I may be a bit inexperienced compared to others here, but to my perspective, the value of these two-person drills varies greatly by the skill and intensity of your partner. When I train with a partner who is at or above my own skill and intensity level, I find that I get quite a bit out of these types of drills. For example, most of the students in my current class are teens or younger, and only one or two of them will actually perform the techniques with any intensity or intent. However, when I have the chance to work with one of our assistant instructors, he makes me be better, because if I don't do the defenses correctly, he'll tag me. He has a pretty good idea of what my ability level is, and he makes me work to get better. One thing our CI tries to stress is that the attacker in our drills *should* throw the techniques such that if the defender messes up, they get touched. Now our organization has 4 sets of prearranged drills. We have two yakusoku kumite drills which are learn for yellow belt ranks (10th kyu through 7th kyu(): and . For green belt ranks, we have our kyu kumite: and our kicking exercise: . At sankyu and above, we do our dan kumite: .Granted, I'm still very much learning the basics, but from what I've seen so far, I think these 2-man drills are valuable when done with intent and focus, and as they get more advanced, they help us learn flow. As one working towards rokkyu (green belt), I'm working the kyu kumite and kicking drill, and that kicking drill has done wonders for helping me with my balance and also judging distances when someone is kicking you (if you step back too far, your blocks won't connect, etc). So, again, just my .02 worth from a relative newbie

I'm glad to hear you're having a good experience at the main dojo. I've also found that the effectiveness of your training can be highly dependent upon your training partners. I hope this semester brings many good things for your training!

Oh, we're very happy with the instructor and the school in general (keep in mind this is a satellite school from the main school). The two options I see are to stay with the rec center or go back to the main dojo. There *are* other options in the area (including other rec center options affiliated with our CI), but they are less optimal than the 2 I'm looking at.

Like the saying goes... The family that trains together, stays together!! More like, "The family that trains together, is more likely to kick each other in the head."Fortunately for me, Zach hasn't learned flying side kicks... yet

Back at the beginning of July, Zach earned his junior 3rd kyu, which in our instructor's school, covers most of the material for senior 9th kyu and a little of the material for other advanced ranks. After that, he moved up to to the 7-12 year old beginner's class, and our CI was having him help other white belts with our yakusoku kumite and kanshiwa kata. When he actually turned 7, both of us moved to a "7+" class at our local rec center taught by a couple of his black belts (his girlfriend [now fiancee'] is a 3rd dan, and the other instructor is a 4th dan). Well, last Wednesday, Heather Sensei told us that we would both be testing for our next belts, and Zach was really nervous... but he passed! The black belt in charge of our groups primarily told us to watch where our eyes were going, but we all looked pretty solid in our techniques (well, I'd interpret that as "rank appropriate"). At the end of the testing, our CI awarded Zach his senior kukyu, and awarded me my shichikyu. Now I get to focus on the whole next set of kumite drills for my rokkyu. Here's me and Zach looking proud with our new certificates: https://imgur.com/I6CGpC0

So it's been awhile since I have been in here. The new job is doing pretty well, -- I'm in that massive learning curve where you feel like you're struggiling every day to figure out what's going on. My first 3 weeks on the job had me in San Jose for onboarding and getting up to speed on the technologies and the product. Well, I also took this as an opportunity to meet some other Uechi-Ryu people in the bay area. They were in the Okikukai branch, so some of their techniques they did a little differently, but 95% of their stuff was the same. Also, I had the opportunity to train pretty much 1:1 with both a 5th degree and an 8th degree. They gave me some very subtle pointers on my katas that I feel really increased my understanding of things. For one thing, they really hammered the "eyes, feet, hands" thing into my brain, so I'm starting to do it more instinctively. One other change is that since my son turned 7 last month, he's now eligible to attend the adult/children classes at our rec center (run through the same school). I figured we'd try it for a month or two to see if I could get what I need out of it. We've been training together there for one month now, and there are some good things and bad things about it. On the plus side, I am guaranteed my two nights training per week -- otherwise Mrs. Aurik complains that she's always having to watch our son while I'm at Karate, and she doesn't feel like she gets her exercise in (it turns out there's an aquarobics class at the community center at the same time). The downsides are that there are exactly two adult students in the class -- me, and one of the other students' moms (incidentially, the kiddo is really good friends with my son). Of the kids that are there, only about 4 of them are anywhere near my height (I'm 6'2"), so it's really hard for me to do 2-person drills with them, and kote kitae with them provides no benefit to me. Now Wednesday nights are different, because one of the other instructors comes to help out with the class, and I get to work with him a fair bit, especially on the 2-man drills and kote kitae. He has very crisp technique, and I learn quite a bit just observing him on the other side of the drills. The other issue I'm having at the rec center is that the room we're in has this slick industrial carpeting, so anytime I need to get into a low stance (shiko-dachi) for one of our katas, I can't go nearly as low as I probably should for fear that my feet will slide right out from underneath me. There have been several occasions during our katas and bunkai that I've found my feet trying to slide out from underneath me. (oops). So I'm going to spend the next month or two deciding whether or not I can adjust to these issues. If not, then I'll be talking with the wife and mini-me to see what the best options moving forward for us are. And... last but not least, this coming weekend is a testing day, and our instructor told us that both my son and I will be testing. My son will be testing for his full yellow belt (9th kyu), and I'll be testing for my 2nd stripe on my yellow belt (7th kyu). This will be my son's first formal testing, but he's seen me go through 2 testing sessions so he should have an idea what to expect. I hope to have some good news to post about that this weekend

So there is a lot of good news in my world right now. First of all, I start a new job on Monday. I was able to negotiate a 20% raise plus signing bonus over my last job, plus they are still paying me to another 7 weeks. I took the time off to, among other things, train a little weapons. I’m now getting the hang oh Sushi no Kon. I’d like to get good enough with that to compete in our next tourney this November. Also, my son just passed his test for junior brown belt (sankyu-sho). This means he gets to move up to the next class early, and he can test for his full yellow belt (kukyu) at the first testing after his 7th birthday. Our sensei also says that kids who have earned their junior brown belts tend to advance through the program slightly faster than other kids their age. The best part was that my wife was able to be at the testing. She cheered louder than any of the parents there, and you could see my son beaming with its pride at his accomplishment.

So the last week has been full of highs and lows. To start with the biggest low, last Wednesday was the first day of my company's Fiscal Year. I also discovered that the planning and resource allocations that they make for the FY goes into effect on May 1. It turns out they reduced allocations to my project, and as a result, I got notified that my position had been eliminated. Hence... laid off. I'm fortunate, however, that I am highly qualified for my job (software engineer), and my company is giving me basically a 3 month severance package. I already have four interviews lined up, and I hope to have something by the beginning of June. However, for the first couple days there I was in a pretty big funk. Also last Saturday, my son entered his first tournament in both the sparring and kata divisions. He had been practicing his Kanshiwa kata every single day for the prior couple of weeks, and it really showed. Before he went there, I told him that the two MOST IMPORTANT things to do in a tournament were to (1) have fun, and (2) do your best. I'm proud to say that he did perform the best kata I've ever seen him do. He did not win a medal, but he did accept his losses with quite a bit of maturity. Also, in the sparring division, he would have a tendency to get what he thought was a point, then stop and look at the judges. At this point, of course, his opponent would tag him. Due to the way our school does belts, he was competing against students that were probably much more advanced than him (he's a junior 4th kyu, but when he turns 7 he moves to an adult/"full" 9th kyu). I also spoke with my sensei today, and apparently some of those schools have kids that specialize in sport/tournament karate. Our school focuses more on traditional karate, but our sensei will spend a few weeks before each tournament to help his students prepare -- like adjusting timing in katas and dealing with point sparring. One thing I was very disappointed about with the tournament was the amount of head contact there. One kid in my son's division got hit in the head hard enough to knock out his mouthguard, and another kid from our dojo got hit in the nose hard enough to make it bleed. Unfortunately the judges were VERY hesitant to let the referee outrightly disqualify a competitor. So one very profound but subtle thing I learned at Monday night's class -- there is no true concept of a "block" in karate. He talked about the moves which we call blocks, such as a gedan barai uke, or age uke, the term "uke" means "to receive". So you're receiving the technique, possibly redirecting it, but not necessarily "blocking" it per se. When he talked about that, I had an immediate insight from my (old) judo days when you had the tori (thrower) and uke (receiver). It also echoes some of the things that Master Thompson spoke about in his seminar last November. Also, with my brief period of LOTS of extra time, I went ahead and scheduled a few private lessons to learn a bo kata. I'd really like to compete at the next tournament my son goes to, and honestly I'm probably too slow to do well at point sparring. I mean when we spar in class, I tend to wait for my opponent to attack, grab their hand/foot, and then slide in close and wail on them. Sometimes I get tagged, sometimes I don't. However, in a real fight my opponent would be in big trouble. (I'm slow, but also a lot bigger and stronger than most of the guys in my class.) So today we started on sushi no kon -- when I was a lot younger, I had worked on something similar (sushi no kon sho, from a different kobudo lineage). It's going to take a lot of practice to get the muscle memory firing again, but it didn't feel TOO weird. The next tournament we're probably going to compete in will be November, so I've got plenty of time to practice. That's long-winded, but it was a VERY eventful week.

Welcome to the forums!

The last few days were pretty good days for training and my karate in general. As I've already posted, last Saturday I passed my test for hachikyu, which meant that last night I got to start on some new material. Last night's adult class consisted of 1 nidan, 2 shodans, 2 shodan-sho's, me, and 2 white belts. So I was paired off with one of our older shodans to do most of my drills (I get to work with him a lot, it's really good practice). The nice thing about working with him is (for a shodan), he isn't all that good with his roundhouse kicks. So when we got to the ashi kitae, my legs have gotten resilient enough that I can ask him to kick me pretty hard (and work on his kicks), and he gets a chance to work on those low round kicks. I've also noticed my shoulders are definitely getting more resilient, because I can make it through all 50 reps on each side for the kote kitae exercises. Next we got to work the throwing aspects of several of our drills. This isn't something that we do very often, but it's a lot of fun. For example, in kanshiwa bunkai, the attacker steps in with an overhead knife attack, and the defense is to step in to a sumo stance, perform a circle block, an elbow strike to the solar plexus, and then a backfist strike to the maxillary bone. The followup throw involves grabbing the opponent's arm, pushing on his opposite shoulder, stepping behind him and sweeping his leg (o soto gari). So I got a chance to work those for awhile, and they felt pretty natural after a few tries. I also found that that position is prime for doing an ippon seionage as well. My partner wasn't familiar with that one, so we practiced that one a bit too. Next I got to work with the two white belts on the kanshiwa bunkai ( ). One of them is a returning student, so he's already familiar with this, but I got to actually (try to) teach it to the other white belt, who was performing it for the first time. I definitely learned a thing or two by trying to teach it to her, and I think she is getting the hang of it. There are a lot of formalities, and I hope I didn't overwhelm her too much.Finally, I got to start working on our next kata (kanshu, previously known as daini seisan). I've seen it done a hundred times, but it's another thing to perform it yourself. After running through it a few times, I've got the major motions down if I think about them. I'm going to have to practice it a few times every day to get it down to the point where I can start getting meaningful corrections though. All in all, it was a great day. I left feeling exhausted, but good. I learned a lot of new stuff, and I started on my next step to shodan.

My sensei once asked my son’s class, “Are your belts for you or for me?” All of the kids thought the belts were for themselves, but what my sensei said was that they were for HIM. They reminded him where in the curriculum each student is, and what he should be focusing his instruction on for them. I don’t think any of the kids really got it, but I thought it was a kinda profound.

As a fairly new practitioner of Uechi-Ryu, I can definitely agree with that. At the start of every single class we run Sanchin 3 times, with our sensei checking our technique. One of the mantras I've heard whenever someone asks a question about a technique is, "go back to Sanchin". Oh, and congrats on the 4th kyu!

So today I had my test (and passed) for hachikyu. It was a very... interesting test. My sensei runs kyu tests every month, and this month we had a total of 25 students testing for ranks from kyukyu all the way up to ikkyu. As to be expected, the vast majority of the students were kids, with 3 adults (including myself). With the way our material breaks down, the students testing for 9th-7th kyu are run in one group (testing for yellow belt ranks), the students testing for 6th-4th kyu are in another group (testing for green belt ranks), and the ones testing for 3rd, 2nd, and 1st kyu were tested separately. I knew it was going to be a very.. interesting test fairly early on. Some of the kids were messing up their drills pretty badly -- and our Sensei wasn't having any of it. If someone made a gross mistake, he'd tell him/her to do it again. Several students had to perform their drills multiple times. One of the students testing for nikyu got LOTS of corrections in his techniques and had to re-do his bunkai several times. I know I made a few mistakes along the way, but they were apparently minor enough to not warrant re-doing any techniques. Afterwards, I got some corrections on my techniques by the black belt in charge of my group. I need to make my circle blocks bigger (I'm apparently not covering my face everytime), and there are a few techniques I made some minor mistakes on. She did compliment me on my speed and power, but she said I should probably dial it back a hair, because I was getting gassed a few times out there. Of course, she also said her father had the same problem until he made black belt (he's now a sandan). My wife and Zach were there for most of the testing, but they had to leave a little early to get Zach to his friend's birthday party. However, when I caught up with them after the party, my wife told me that Zach noticed that of all the students that were getting yelled at or corrected, I was not one of them. And my wife said, "That's because daddy was prepared". More than anything else, that made me feel super proud -- even more proud than passing the test.

... of course the workaround would just be to create an image link with the full text of your post and then insert that into your posting

I really enjoyed the first seaon, and in one of the clips for Season 2, I really enjoyed how Johnny is now telling the Cobras how they were going to start fighting fair and square. I'm wondering what transpires with Johnny for him to make this change. I also am very curious to see how Kreese showing back up in the show is going to play out. I really like how Johnny has become a much more complex character than he was in the movie without having to retcon anything from the movie. The whole Johnny before the movie backstory gives his character a lot of depth I thought. Only 3 more weeks for Season 2. Of course, I'm also binging GoT right now in order to get ready for THAT!

One could (very effectively) argue that no inherently hand-to-hand or weapon of limited range, such as martial arts weapons, can be considered more dangerous or deadly than a handgun. If you look at any statistic, vastly more people are injured or killed by handguns than by every single hand-to-hand weapon put together. YET the Supreme Court ruled in DC vs Heller that the second amendment to the constitution gives an individual a right to bear arms, and requires that states and municipalities provide law-abiding citizens with means to lawfully own handguns. How, then can a federal judge rule that any hand-to-hand weapon should be outright banned when there must be a legal means for a citizen to own a handgun?

My son is currently 6 years old, and our sensei does things a fair bit differently for his 4-6 year old students. For one thing, the requirements for the "junior" belts (denoted by a -sho suffix, and a white stripe on the belt) are very different than those for the normal belts, and he doesn't have formal testing days for the junior classes -- when a kiddo is ready to test, he'll get him/her to demonstrate their material, and if he feels they've performed well enough, at the end of the class he will award them their next rank. He and I had been discussing when Zach would be ready for his next rank, and he had given me some things to work on with him at home. I figured he was a week or two away from testing, but yesterday he proved me wrong. On Monday he had watched Zach as he performed Kanshiwa, and he also watched him do a few of the requirements from his previous tests. Yesterday he started out the class by asking Zach to help with the warmups, and then he started having individual students work with him on their rank-specific techniques while the other students watched. My son was the last to go (since he's the highest-ranked student in the class), and he did great! Sensei asked him to perform his techniques twice -- he made one mistake on the first go-round. However, at the end of class, he announced several promotions, and Zach was one of them. So a big congratulations to the newest Yonkyu-sho in my house We're planning on having him work towards earning his junior brown belt before he ages out of the program (in July). Also, if he does earn the junior brown belt, that waives his time in rank requirement before he can test for his full yellow belt (kukyu). I'm so proud of him. https://i.imgur.com/C0yTkEV.jpg

So things have been going pretty well for the most part for me. I'm finding my speed, power, and technique are improving very quickly, but my endurance still pretty much sucks. For example, Monday night my Sensei was working with me on Kanshiwa Bunkai as a pre-test, and I was giving it my all. I did a great job, but I was sucking wind for a full minute or two afterwards. The good news is that after that, he asked me if I had any questions, and my main question was, "Is there anything I should be doing differently when I test for this [this coming Saturday]". His response was, "No, don't change anything right now." Meaning of course: Yes, I see places you can improve, but I don't want you over-thinking things on your upcoming test. I'm also getting the hang of our kicking drill. On the surface, it's not horribly practical, but I'm finding it's a great tool for working my flexibility, judging distance, and flow/transitions. You can see my sensei and one of our junior black belts perform it here: It's also one of those drills where it's actually easier to do with a partner, because the blocks for several of the kicks help the attacker "wind up" for the next kick. This is especially true for the side kick->spinning hook kick sequence.One thing I like about our instructor is that he will teach you things when he thinks you're ready to absorb them. This may be long before you need to know them for your rank. For example, I'm currently working hojo undo, kote kitae, Sanchin, Kanshiwa (+bunkai), the Yakosoku Kumite drills, the Kyu Kumite drills, and the kicking drill. However, the Kyu Kumite and Kicking drills I won't need to know until I test for Rokkyu/Green Belt (6 months+ out). This gives me plenty of time to instill these drils in my brain and build the muscle memory before I need to test for them. I'd say "wish me luck" on Saturday, but I'm feeling pretty confident about my abilities today.