aurik

A few years ago, our CI added a new requirement for test eligibility -- students had to re-test over all their kyu-level material and show a dan-level proficiency with them. Once they have done so to his satisfaction, he awards them an "advanced brown belt", or brown belt with black stripe running down the middle. This is one of the ways he has trimmed the black belt test down to a 2 hour (or so) test.

We have two portions of our dan gradings: we have a 12 week prep cycle followed by the exam itself. The 12 week prep cycle consists of an additional class each week where students are basically taught the test. The class will only consist of the items that are tested on, and the instructors will, for a lack of a better term, nitpick the students on what is and is not acceptable on the test. There are specific expectations for our style, our organization, and our dojo for the different components on the test, and the purpose of the prep cycle is to drill these expectations into the student's heads. The instructors will add additional stress to the students by having them perform kata and/or drills solo in front of the class, and they'll then give feedback with the expectation that the student incorporate that feedback quickly. While it is uncommon, it is possible for a student to fail the prep cycle and not be invited to test. Our CI tries to keep the tests to no more than 2 hours. This is mainly accomplished by limiting the number of students in a giving test. During the test, the students generally demonstrate their material either alone or in a pair. Sometimes (such as for kata bunkai) they may have two pairs demonstrating at the same time. However, unlike kyu-level tests, they will never have large groups of students demonstrating concurrently. If we have more than 10 or a dozen students testing at the same time, he'll run multiple tests. For example, he ran two tests last fall -- one for youths, and one for adults.

I'm a Uechi guy, and Seisan is one of our three core kata. According to our history, Kanbun Uechi traveled to the Shaolin temple in Fukien province to study martial arts, and while he was there he earned three Menkyo (teaching licenses): for Sanchin, Seisan, and Sanseiryu. He returned to Okinawa in 1909, and eventually moved to Wakayama Japan in 1924, where he resumed teaching what he first called "PangaiNoon", and later "Uechi-Ryu Karate-Jutsu". These three kata still form the core of our system. His son (Kanei) and senior students added 5 additional kata to our system to help students better transition between the three core kata. However, when testing for advanced Dan grades (6th dan and up), the tests consist of the three core kata: Sanchin, Seisan, and Sanseiryu.

This book was cute but it wasn't for me. I did not finish it. If you have young readers, I think that this would be the perfect book for them! I am now reading The Frugal Wizard's Handbook for Surviving Medieval England by Brandon Sanderson. I thoroughly enjoyed all of Brandon Sanderon's Secret Projects; The Frugal Wizard was a very cool departure from what I'm used to reading from him. Have you read his other Secret Projects?

In our round kick, we either kick with the instep (directly opposite the heel), or with the toe (if you've conditioned it). If you kick with the top of the foot hard enough to a non-squishy part of your opponent, you run the risk of hyperextending your ankle. A toe kick to the outside of the thigh can be absolutely debilitating, especially if your opponent hasn't conditioned for it. Every so often I'll (lightly) hit an opponent with a toe (roundhouse) kick at the end of an ashikitae session, and you can tell by the look on their face that there's a huge difference.

The Wide Wide Sea: Imperial Ambition, First Contact, and the Fateful Final Voyage of Captain James Cook by Hampton Sides. I'd just finished reading Shogun and Tai-Pan by James Clavell, and my manager suggested this one as a biography of one of the great explorers of that era. It's a fascinating read and I highly recommend it.

I'd take you up on that. Most of the schools I've been a part of have not indulged in this kind of training. I've dabbled a bit in the past, years ago, but without really knowing anything about what I was doing. I've seen a partner forearm blocking drill that I think would work really well, but never any of the leg kicking stuff. I do think this kind of training would be beneficial, so long as it's done right. I'd be afraid of getting that "no pain, no gain!" style instructor that would batter someone up to the point that movement was difficult and actually causing injury. A certain amount of pain is beneficial, but there's a very distinct line between "a good amount" of pain, and "too much" pain. Any damage you can't recover from in a couple of days is too much pain. It's one of those things where you figure out what the right amount is as you go along.

As a Uechi-Ryu practitioner, conditioning plays a fundamental role in our training. A usual class for us starts with the following four things: junbi undo (warmup exercises), hojo undo (supplementary exercises/kihons), sanchin kata, and kotekitae/ashikitae. One can also consider Sanchin kata to be conditioning as well, since one purpose of Sanchin is to strengthen the entire body through dynamic tension. At higher grades, we frequently test a person's focus in Sanchin through "shime" testing; -- an instructor will pull, push, and strike a person while they perform Sanchin. This tests their mental focus (ie, can you continue doing Sanchin through distractions), their stance & balance (ie, if I push you, can I make you break out of your stance), and their overall conditioning (ie, I'll strike various parts of the body, forearms, legs, abs, pecs, lats, and traps to check if they are keeping the muscles tight and protecting themselves.) This conditioning plays a vital role as students enter the brown and black belt grades. At those grades, students practice rensoku-style kumite drills -- ie, the drills are done full power, full speed in a flowing back and forth motion. Students who haven't conditioned their arms will find bruises forming on their foreams when they block in certain sequences. Students who haven't conditioned their shins will get bruises there when doing certain kicking sequences. As a general rule, it takes about 2 years of regular conditioning training to build an appropriate baseline. Of course, if you condition hard enough, long enough, with enough intensity, you can do really cool breaks like these: As far as "how often and how long" do we train -- we train kotekitae most classes for about 10-15 minutes. The key is for an individual to figure out how much punishment he/she can take without bruising or injury. There is a very definite line between "not training hard enough", "training just right", and "training too hard". You can generally figure out how much training is "just right" when your arms are bright red and things are shaking just a bit (we call those the "uechi shakes"). I once made the mistake of training leg conditioning too hard and gave myself a bone bruise on my shin -- it took MONTHS for that to heal, and while it was healing, I was unable to do any meaningful conditioning. So until a student figures out how hard is hard enough, err on the side of caution. Here's an example of what we do in one of our classes:

It doesn't happen very often -- only 6 times since the Conn Smythe trophy was first awarded. The last time it happened was in 2003, when Jean-Sebastien Giguere won the Conn Smythe as the goalie on the (losing) Anaheim Ducks. He stole the first 3 rounds of the playoffs, and darn near stole the fourth round.

Monday 3/24 Swim 1x100, 1x300, mix of front crawl and breaststroke Weight 375.2 Tuesday 3/25 Swim 1x400, mix of front crawl and breaststroke Weight 375.4 I'm working on bringing the stamina up. I'm definitely working the upper back pretty hard. The goal by the end of the month is to do 3x200. The goal for the end of the summer is to be able to do 1 mile (1750 yards) nonstop. I think I can get there.

I thoroughly enjoyed Game 7 last night -- it was everything a Game 7 should be. Florida got back to their game and were able to make it especially hard on the Oilers, and the Oilers absolutely pummeled Bobrovsky in the third period. The Oilers ended up having to play all of their top players throughout the third period, and it showed in their exhaustion. I was a bit disappointed that McDavid never came out to accept the Conn Smythe trophy. I understand that after you've come -><- this close to winning the Cup, you're absolutely gutted, but put on your big boy pants and come out and accept it. You could definitely make a case for Bobrovsky, but his performance in games 4-6 of the Finals definitely hurt his case. However, when you break one of Gretzky's records in your playoff performance and put up two consecutive 4-point games in the Stanley Cup Finals, it's hard to argue with.

My first belt test was in 1989. I was a senior in high school testing for my kukyu in Tetsuken-Ryu Shorinji Kempo -- it was a small dojo run out of my hometown. I ended up earning gokyu in that style, but I don't remember much of what I learned there. I also learned aiki-jujutsu there (I earned my black belt with them) -- I don't remember all of the techniques, but I remember enough that it's made my study of aikido much smoother. Unfortunately I've had to take a break from aikido, because some of the other practitioners at our school don't have good control and feel the need to crank down on your joints. The last time that happened it took about 3 months for my forearm tendons to feel right again.

I don't think the Oilers will continue to dominate the Panthers for the next 2 games. I expect the Panthers to snuff out the Oilers' Stanley Cup dreams this evening.

The road back to normalcy today involved an hour of training in Kobudo (bo and sai), followed by a 1.5 hour karate teaching class. Kobudo mainly involved working the first set of bo hojo undo, a little bit of the second hojo undo, starting to learn the first bo kata (sushi no kun), and then the first set of sai hojo undo. I may have mentioned this earlier, but there's a lot of muscle memory involved here -- I trained in bo for about year back in the mid 90's (sai, too). So my brain still somewhat remembers the fundamentals. What my body does NOT have is the muscular strength and endurance for bo and sai. There is a lot of lat involvement with the bo kata, which tends to wear those out. And working the sai warmups is pretty hard on the shoulders and rotator cuff. It doesn't help that I've had a partially torn left rotator cuff for decades. It tends to get tired and achy very easily when working new sequences I'm not used to. The good news is that I'm starting to get the hang of the first set of bo and sai hojo undo, and I was able to follow along through most of the first kata. There were a few sequences that I struggled with (mainly just trying to get my legs to do what they need to). All in all, I'm starting to feel good about how I'm picking up the basics and how they're starting to feel natural. The other good news is that I wasn't completely gassed for karate after the kobudo class. Since we had a couple of students in for their very first class, our CI ran the warmups and basics. However, once we split into groups, I was running the advanced group. I found myself getting gassed a bit easier than I am used to, but I attribute that both to a) doing the kobudo class beforehand, and b) being about 4 weeks out from regular training. I felt pretty good and strong with running kata today, even though I made a pretty big boneheaded move on Seiryu (required for nidan). Again, I haven't run that in a little while. I found the power and speed were about what I'm used to. The stamina is just a bit short, but I expect that to come back to where I'm used to in the next couple week. On a slight tangent, I started making my own weapons -- a few years ago, I bought a bunch of lumber to make cabinets for my garage. While I was there, I saw this nice big chunk of purpleheart -- about 2"x8"x78". Last weekend, I took my table saw to it, and cut a couple of 1 3/8" square x78" blanks. One of those I further cut down to octagonal, and now I'm working on turning it into a bo staff. The other I'll also make a bo out of, but it'll be a (slightly) belated birthday present for my CI. After that, I plan on making a pair of nunchaku and a few other things.

Thursday 6/20 1 hour kobudo class 1.5 hours karate instruction Weight 372.2 (typoed that. it really should have been 372.2. I got ahead of myself) Sadly the pool was closed in the morning due to lightning.

I'll keep that in mind. I've been making wholesale changes to my diet -- substantially reducing portion sizes and reducing empty calories, especially at breakfast and lunch. Hence the 16 lbs down already.

As some of you may have seen in my other extended post, I recently had quite the health scare -- I was in the hospital overnight with a bout of atrial fibrillation. Basically, my heart was beating at 160-170 bpm at rest, and it just plain wouldn't slow down. When I was at the hospital, I weighed in at 388.6 lbs (highest I've been in a LONG time), which is likely partly due to eating way too much on vacation, and not getting enough real exercise. Between then and now, I've made it a new goal to lose weight and improve my overall cardiovascular fitness. This log is going to be me keeping myself accountable, and seeing where I started, and how far I've come. Unfortunately this week I'm on the tail end of a nasty allergy/cold thing that has made it more difficult to work out. I'm not going to use that as an excuse, but it is what is is. My general workout plans will involve: - Lap swimming - Kettlebell circuits - Push-ups - Martial arts training days (karate and kobudo) So on to Day 1: Tuesday 6/18: Weigh-in: 372.6lbs (down 16lbs from the hospital) Swimming: 4x100 yards in the morning, 1x100 yds in the evening (had a BSA swim test to do) Overall impressions: Swimming has been getting easier, but my lats and triceps are still very not used to it. I was on a swim team from the age of 6 until I graduated high school, and I remember swimming 2+ miles per day. My goal is going to hit 1 mile per day a couple days a week. I've got a long way to go.

Meijin gis are very popular at our dojo.

That's one win. The Oilers still need to pull of 3 more in a row. I don't see it happening.

So the last few weeks have been... very interesting, and completely in the best of ways. The wife, Zach, and I started the summer out with a trip to Florida and a Caribbean Cruise. While in Florida, we spent one day hanging out around Cocoa Beach (checking out Ron Jon's Surf Shop, for starters), swimming at the hotel pool, and overall just enjoying NOT being at home. We spent Day 2 at the Kennedy Space Center -- we were able to see most of the really interesting things. For one thing, until you see the Saturn V/Apollo rocket up close and personal, you have absolutely no idea how massive it is. You see these massive first, second and third stages, and their only job is to get the tiny service module / lunar module / command module out of Earth's gravity. We also got to see the space shuttle Atlantis, which was suspended at an angle from the ceiling. Again, until you see it up close and personal, you have no idea of the scale. Outside the Atlantis display, they had one of the main fuel tanks and solid rocket boosters on display. During the tour they mentioned that the SRB's expend all of their fuel in less than 2 minutes, and the main tank's fuel only lasts 8 minutes. Talk about some pretty crappy gas mileage. The cruise was great -- we went on the Disney Wish, which is their newest and biggest ship. The ship was about 50% bigger in terms of tonnage than the other ships we had been on, but it has the same passenger capacity -- so more room for stuff. We had a great time, we spent two days at Nassau, two days at Disney's private island, and one day just cruising at sea. It was a great time, but towards the end of the cruise, I started feeling really tired all of a sudden. I had come down with a nasty sinus cold, and kept feeling like I was going to hack up a lung. So when we got back, I took myself to the local urgent care to get something stronger than OTC stuff for the cold. Well, they took one look at my pulse and blood pressure -- my pulse was 160-170, and my blood pressure was through the roof. They told me I needed to go straight to the ER for an EKG. Oh, and don't drive yourself. You don't need an ambulance, but if you pass out on the way... well, that would be BAD. Tried to call the wife, but she works in a secure area and couldn't receive calls. Tried to call friend #1, no answer. Called friend #2 and he was working from home that day, so he was able to come pick me up. We ran by the house to get Zach, and then off to the nearest ER. So I get to the ER -- they didn't know I was coming, even though the LPN at the urgent care said they'd call ahead. They take my pulse & BP and say "You need an EKG". They put me on an EKG and bring me right back to an exam room, where they stab me multiple times to get IV's going. (IV's on me are always interesting, because I have thick skin and my veins roll around). I talk to the Emergency Medicine doc, and she tells me that I'm suffering from either atrial fibrillation or atrial flutter. While she is explaining these things, my wife shows up (I was able to get a hold of her on the way to the ER), and she gets the explaination as well, They try to give me some fast-acting medication to slow things down... but 3 rounds of that don't work. Next I get to talk to an internal medicine doctor who asks me about my travel. I told him that I'd been snorkeling and he asked lots of details about that (I didn't go more than about 10 feet down, and I didn't fly within 48 hours of snorkeling, so the bends was a non-issue). He says they're going to admit me for at least 24 hours. Next I got a chest X-ray (came out clear) and a chest CT to look for blood clots (came back clear). Then on the way up to the hospital room. They hook me up to All The Monitors and start an IV drip of a different medication. Over the course of the evening, they'd stop by every couple of hours to draw blood (and of course, they had to do it from a fresh poke), check my pulse and blood pressure, and all of the other poking and prodding you get to enjoy in a hospital room. Of course, whenever I coughed (which was pretty frequent), my pulse would go back through the roof. At some point over the course of the evening, the medication really kicked in, my heart slowed down to a normal rate, and things returned to a normal rhythm. They were able to slowly bring my medication drip back down. At some point during the day, my leads came loose from the EKG monitor, and they had to replace them.... of course they didn't shave the areas in question before putting them on, so I felt just like Steve Carrell from "The 40 Year Old Virgin" (I was tempted to shout "Kelly Clarkson!" as they ripped off the sticky pads). After even more tests (another EKG, a cardiac echo with contrast), a couple discussions with a different internal medicine doctor, and a new batch of medications, they sent me home with instructions to see both a cardiologist and my primary care physician. On the way home, I called up the cardiologist's office who monitored my chart in the hospital (they were also in-network and had very good reviews) to set up a followup with them, and set up a followup with my PCP... Fast forward a week -- the new meds have me pretty dizzy at first, until I figure out that if I have one cup of coffee and eat immediately afterwards, it doesn't affect me nearly as bad. I had one appointment at the cardiologist's office to get fitted for a cardiac monitor for 30 days. A second appt at the cardiologist's office 2 hours later, and the cardiologist's PA basically tells me that "Yes, what you had was technically an MI [myocardial infarction], but based on the results of your EKG and the cardiac echo, you should see no long-term effects." Except that they now have me on meds to keep it from happening again. And they want a 3 month followup with one of the physicians AND a nuclear stress test. My primary care physician gives me a workup as well -- blood pressure is high normal, resting pulse is in the mid-60's, so things are looking reasonably well. I'm overdue for an annual physical, so that's scheduled, and I'm also due for a few other tests... so we get that scheduled. During this time, I've been trying to get back into the martial arts -- I've been wanting to do weapons, so I tried a couple classes. I'd done weapons in my 20's, and some of the muscle memory is there, but the class works a lot of muscles I'm not used to, so major new soreness issues. I was able to get through a karate class until Hanshi started running "speed kata", and I had to sit down, but that's mainly from not training for 3+ weeks. My new goals for the year are to lose weight. It's been one of the things I've said "I need to do this", but now it's really important. I've adjusted my diet and portion sizes since my hospital stay, and I'm now down about 15 lbs since I checked in for my overnight stay. I'm going to add in more exercise throughout the week, with the overall goal of being around much longer so I can see my kid graduate high school, college, get married, and all of those things. Sooo... that's where we are today.

The US as a rule doesn't accredit martial arts instructors. It is up to each style and/or organization to supply the accreditations. Technically if I wanted to open my own martial arts school, I'm welcome to do so. Now as far as my style, organization, and dojo goes: My dojo has 3 levels of apprentice instructor. An assistant instructor level 1 needs to be a (full) black belt with a certain number of teaching hours. As a level 1 instructor, I can run classes with supervision and sit on kyu testing boards. Since I am also a nidan, I can sit on dan-grade testing boards, evaluating students for ranks up to shodan. The dojo also has a level 2 and level 3 assistant instructor certification. Each certification gives you a bit more autonomy on how you run classes. At level 2, I think you are able to run classes at satellite schools. Once you earn a level 3 dojo certification, you are usually a sandan. Once you are a sandan with a level 3 dojo certification, you can be referred to our organization for a shidoin license, which allows you to open your own dojo in the organization, but you are still required to be nominally supervised by a master instructor (shihan). At godan you can also apply for a shihan's license, which allows you to teach independenty without supervision.

Up until about halfway through the third period, I didn't even think the Oilers were really going to show up last night. Then they tried to come back and make a real game of it. However, the odds of them coming back to win from 0-3 is near nil. I've seen it happen exactly once in my 10+ years watching the NHL.

Not yet, but I definitely should!! I mean, we had several breaks throughout the sessions, so I could have taken copious notes during those breaks. I'll definitely need to do that in the future.

One thing that we have drilled into us that especially applies to tournaments is, "eyes, feet, hands". LOOK at where your opponent is coming from, MOVE to your new position and ensure you're set in your stance, THEN do your block/strike sequence.

I have to say, Dallas just plain didn't show up for game 5 until the last 5 minutes or so. They came back with a vengeance in Game 6, but Edmonton and Skinner just didn't give them any solid second chances.