aurik

Right now I'm re-reading "Oathbringer" by Brandon Sanderson (book 3 of the Stormlight Archive). He will be releasing book 5 this December, and I'm doing a re-read so everything is fresh in my memory when book 5 hits the streets.

One of the things I love about my CI is that every year he makes a point to bring in outside instructors to run seminars. He just finished his second seminar this year, in fact. Earlier this year, he brought 3 instructors from Uechi-Ryu Kenseikai (one of our sister organizations) to teach us tournament kata and their ways of doing things. Last weekend, he brought in Raymundo Veliz from the Matayoshi Kobudo Kodokan Nishinomiya Shibu to run a 2-day kobudo seminar and also help run dan-level gradings. I personally find these seminars valuable because you both get to see new material, and you also get different perspectives on the material you may already know. For example, in the Kenseikai seminar, Shoko Akamine (one of the instructors) is a multi-time world champion in kata and the other two instructors perform judging at the international level, so they were able to give us perspectives on how competitive tournament kata differ from the ways we run kata day-to-day. With these extra perspectives, you can figure out what works for you and then incorporate that into your own karate. At least in our school, we are taught the fundamental way of doing things, then as we get to advanced kyu and dan grades, we are expected to show advanced level understanding of all of our techniques. However, at some point past shodan, we are also allowed and even encouraged to find our own expression for our techniques (within a certain accepted framework, of course).

Last week was a really good week. As I've previously mentioned, I started training in Matayoshi Kobudo this June. Having a foundation in Uechi-Ryu definitely helps in some ways. Some of the body mechanics are the same, but some of the others are waaay different. For example, in Uechi-Ryu, you generally want to keep your shoulders square at all times, to keep an opponent from pulling you off-balance -- once you're off-balance, you're vulnerable. However, in kobudo, you have a weapon, and that weapon is more effective when you can get reach on an opponent. So you'll often lead with your weapon shoulder, and the hip rotations in kobudo are far more pronounced than in Uechi-Ryu. So it's "different, yet same". (I actually have the converse of this conversation with the students who have started doing Uechi-Ryu after spending a lot of time in kobudo). So I'm starting to get the hang of the bo and the sai. With the bo, we have 3 sets of hojo undo (basic techniques) followed by a number of kata (5, I think?). While you'll start learning the bo kata as soon as you're ready for it, it's not a firm requirement until shodan. Likewise the sai consists of a set of hojo undo along with 3 kata (and the kata aren't tested until shodan). I'm still struggling mightily with the tonfa (we call them the tonkua), but I won't be tested on those for quite awhile. Well, this past week, our CI brought in Raymundo Veliz from the Matayoshi kodokan. He ran mini-sessions (30 mins each) on Thursday, then ran additional sessions through the weekend. There were 2x 2-hour sessions on both Saturday and Sunday. Session 1 was bo, session 2 was sai, session 3 was tuonkua, and session 4 was nunchaku. In each session, Raymundo sensei started out with the fundamentals, and for each fundamental he showed the movement, we'd practice it a few times, and then he'd bring a partner up to at as an opponent with a rattan/bamboo bo, and then explain WHY we did the movements the way we did. In many cases the move as written was drastically different than the move as applied. For example, with the sai, all of the hojo undo combinations start with a chudan tsuki (mid-level punch). But per Raymundo, it's not "really" a punch, but you're switching stance to get in a more advantageous position. It just "looks" like a punch. He also has a sharp sense of humor (in 3 languages no less) -- he grew up in Mexico and has lived and taught in Japan for the past 18 years. Every so often his English would fail him, so he'd fall back to Spanish or Japanese and wait for someone in the audience to give him the right English word. But as an instructor, he is energetic and has a real passion for teaching. The sheer amount of information I learned over this seminar is astounding. We worked on fundamentals, bunkai (which you usually don't even start on until green belt or above), kata (including tonkua no kata dai ichi and nunchaku no kata, which I'd never tried before), and a LOT of discussions about the why and how, including generous amounts of body mechanical explanations. The good news is that for the past 2 months I've been training with the massive purpleheart bo that I made. It's about 6 1/2 feet long, octagonal, and untapered. It's extremely heavy to wield and wears me out using it. So this past weekend I used my old oak (untapered) 6' bo. Which is heavy and stout, but not nearly as big as the purpleheart bo. After using the purpleheart bo for 2 months, that oaken bo felt super light. Which is what I was going for. I think from now on I'll test with the oaken bo and train with the purpleheart one. It was one of those weekends that "levels up" your understanding of everything, especially if you can remember it all. I'm just not sure if I can, and I'm not sure where to begin writing it down. Now I'll be spending the next day or two recovering. My traps and lats are shot, and my lower back is exhausted too. But it was definitely worth it.

Preseason starts this month!!

I've been quite remiss in updating this thread. A lot of things have happened over the past few months. I've been keeping up with all of my doctor's appointments related to my incident in May. I had a nuclear stress test in July, which showed that my heart is still pumping blood how it needs to so that isn't an issue I need to worry about right now. I spoke with the cardiologist last week, and she suggested that since what I had was atrial flutter (different than atrial fibrillation), there is a surgical way of correcting it. From what I understand, the surgeon would go in through my femoral vein with a laser and essentially zap away the set of neurons that can go haywire and trigger the atrial flutter. I'm nervous about it, but it would mean I wouldn't need to be on blood thinners anymore. I have an appointment to speak with the surgeon in October, so we'll see what he says. I'm very concerned with complications, but I'll at least see what the surgeon says. The weight is down by 20 lbs since I had my episode. It's not coming off as fast as I'd like, but it IS coming off, which is the important thing. I've had to trim my belt twice, and I'm going to have to start buying smaller pants here soon, so that's a good thing. In terms of martial arts, I'm continuing to teach my weekly Thursday class, and we just got a new batch of white belts in the class so that's fun. My Thursday night now consists of an hour of kobudo followed by teaching my karate class. Saturdays is usually an hour of karate followed by an hour of kobudo, with last Saturday I did an hour of karate, an hour of kobudo, and then a kobudo test. Our instructors tend to give feedback after the test, and one of the pieces of feedback I got will basically mean I'll need to relearn the way I handle the bo (specifically with the grip changes that are involved). I did finish my purpleheart bo, and it's a beast. I intentionally made it long and heavy with the intention that if I can wield this effortlessly, I can pretty much pick up any bo in the dojo and it'll feel like a toothpick. I'll get some pics of it shortly. In the next couple weeks I plan on taking that purpleheart (I"ve still got plenty of it) and making a set of nunchaku. We have a guy in our dojo who has made quite a few weapons and is willing to help me out on that. It also turns out that I've got some pretty unique tools that should help with that. More on that later. I spent the first 2 weeks of August in Colorado Springs taking an "Introduction to Bladesmithing" class. I have to say that in those 2 weeks, my forging and grinding techniques improved by leaps and bounds. I'm now able to take a piece of steel and forge it efficiently into the shape I want, so that there's a lot less time required on the grinder afterwards. I'm also getting to the point where I can draw something on a sheet of paper and forge within an eighth of an inch or so to that shape. (That's about 3mm for you metric folks). There's a LOT left to learn, but I feel like I'm at a point where I'm comfortable making something and giving it and/or selling it to someone else. So this coming weekend I'll be heading down to Colorado Springs again and starting on a few projects: - A set of Japanese scabbard chisels (https://www.waltersorrellsblades.com/product-page/saya-nomi-japanese-scabbard-chisel). It turns out these are also EXTREMELY useful for cutting in the side grooves on a set of nunchaku. I checked with my friend, and it looks like a 5/16" width is just about the right width for it. And it so happens I've got 1/4" stock that will forge out to just about the size I need - Two test blades for the ABS Journeyman test. I made a couple in my class, but these won't qualify since they were made during a test. These are blades only for the purpose of passing the ABS Journeyman performance test: They have to be no longer than 15" with a 10" blade, the blade can't be any wider than 2", and they have to pass the performance test: Slice through a 1" rope in one swing, Cut a wooden 2x4 in half, twice, Shave hair off your arm (to show it's still sharp), and then put it in a vise and bend it to 90 degrees without breaking. It's okay if it doesn't straighten back to true. - We have a few kids in my son's Scout troop who will be completing their requirements for Eagle Scout in the next few months. I plan on making them custom knives to commemorate the event. I've found a really cool idea for a pommel that I should be able to cast out of bronze, and we'll see about other things as well. And I'm going to start making the commitment to work as much on fit and finish as I do forging. For the longest time I'd forge something out and never finish it. From here on out I'm going to finish them.

In both of the arts we teach, Uechi-Ryu and Matayoshi Kobudo, kiais are usually short and from the gut. Each of our katas usually has a couple moves in which you are expected to do a kiai, usually 2-3 per kata. Additionally, when performing hojo undo techniques in Matayoshi Kobudo, we are expected to kiai on the last technique of a set. For example, if you are doing a set of 3 techniques forwards and backwards you would kiai on the third and sixth technique. Every so often our CI will discuss the different philosophies/reasonings behind the kiai -- it can be used to focus your energy at the kime point of the technique, or it can be used before delivering the technique to distract your opponent. I don't think he's ever really corrected students on which way he prefers. What's really funny is the kids and beginners when told to kiai will often shout "KIAI!". Our CI sometimes tells them that what they're doing is essentially yelling "YELL!".

Curtis Joseph, Roberto Luongo, and Adam Oates come to mind. After all, what Blues fan doesn't recall one of the best center/winger pairs of Hull and Oates? And you can't leave CuJo off the list either.

I enjoyed Elantris, but you can tell it's one of his earlier (published) works. His writing has definitely evolved and improved over the years. I've only read the four Earthsea books by Le Guin; how is The Language of the Night?

In preparation for his new book, Wind and Truth, I just started rereading Brandon Sanderon's The Way of Kings

On its surface, that just sounds all kinds of wrong. But I'll definitely need to check it out!

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.