aurik

So last Thursday I'm training with the black belts doing the dan kumite drills from one of our sister organizations. I first start working with Jack, who is about a year into his Shodan, and unfortunately doesn't know these drills very well. So I'm walking through them slowly. Then I switch to working with Ian, and he's getting ready to test for his nidan in a few weeks. We start training at (not-quite) full-power, full speed, and on one of the roundhouse kicks, I decide to test him by giving him a solid roundhouse kick, which he blocks with a solid X-block. Ow... that hurts my shin a bit -- clearly I need to do better conditioning on them. Later that class, I glance down to see a bit of red on the front of my gi pants. I pull up the pant leg to see that I've got a blood blister the size of my thumb that's pulled open. Well, THAT hasn't happened in awhile... It didn't slow me down, but I did pause enough to put a band-aid on it so not to leak all over my uniform and the tatami.

It's definitely true. We have seen some teams that had historically good regular seasons win the Presidents Trophy and lose in the first round just in recent years. Boston last year when they lost to Florida and Tampa in 2019 actually got swept in the opening round. Once the playoffs start everything that happened in the regular season doesn't matter anymore. Tonight, Colorado and Nashville evened up their series a 1-1, both getting three goal victories. The NY Rangers and Florida Panthers are up 2-0 in their series after wins on Tuesday night, both one goal games. Well, the Avs had the best home record in the regular season, so I'm liking their chances from here out. Of course, as the Bruins from last year showed us, what happens in the regular season doesn't mean much in the playoffs...

My bracket is: Stars, Avs, Canucks, Edmonton, Florida, Boston, Caps, Canes Avs, Oilers, Bruins, Caps Avs, Bruins Avs My neighbors across the street are die hard Rangers fans. They were super excited that the Rangers won the President's Trophy. Then I reminded them that many Presidents' Trophy winners fail to clear the first round...

Happy birthday! I hope you make the most of your special day.

How I spent my night last night: Polishing a sword and watching playoff hockey...

My picks: East: Caps, Lightning, Canes, and Bruins West: Stars, Avs, Oilers, and Preds

So it's been a while since I posted in here. Things have been going pretty well, both at the dojo and in other areas. I've continued to train about twice a week, and teach once or twice per week. I've had quite a few new kids start coming to the youth advanced class as they earn their purple belts and brown belts (yonkyu/sankyu). I continue to struggle with my new kata -- there are quite a few nuances in there that I'm still working to understand. Of course, with a third-degree form, that's to be expected. There are also some physical demands in the form that are particularly difficult for me with my knee and back issues -- but those issues are slowly clearing up. Last week, my CI informed me that it was time to move from teaching the youth advanced classes to teaching the adult classes. He's wanting to do this for a few reasons: he has a couple of assistant instructors that will soon be testing for their (full, adult) shodan, and he'd like to be able to move them to that class. Also, as instructors start getting closer to their shidoin license, he wants to make sure they can teach both kids and adults. So I've decided to move to teaching the Thursday adult class, since that's the class I normally attend. I'm usually the highest ranked student in that class. Honestly, I don't see it as an issue if there's a higher-ranked student in the class either, because a) I have mutual respect with anyone higher-ranked than I am; at this point there aren't that many of the, and b) I'm always diplomatic and respectful with anyone I am instructing. I will say it was definitely a different experience teaching an all-levels adult class last night, especially with two brand-new students in the class (as in, still in their 2 week trial period). I kept an eye on both of them, trying to keep the warmups and explanations at a level they cound follow along with. Along the way, I kept an eye out for "teachable moments", and picked a couple of them to demonstrate. For example, in one of our hojo undo sequences, on the first count we do a shuffle-step forward along with a downward scooping block, and return our hands to a "ready" position. On the second count, we do a quick snapping/flicking motion with both hands towards the opponent's eyes. Well, I noticed that one of our students had her "guard/ready" position right against her upper chest. So I had her come up in front and had her demonstrate the first step of the sequence. When she paused her hands right in front, I just calmly reached out with one hand and pinned both of her hands against her (upper) chest. (I wasn't touching anywhere inappropriate, mind you). Later on in the class, our CI had me teaching the new students (yellow belt and below) Sanchin kata, and I found a few teachable moments there. The first time through, I just walked through the sequence nice and slow and made sure the newest students could keep up. The second and third times, I kept the pace pretty slow and gave corrections as I could. After the third time, I noticed that two of the students were doing the "strike and immediately pull back" in their thrusts. So, I explained/demonstrated how you should leave your strikes out for a moment or two to allow them to penetrate and the energy to dissipate into your opponent. Teaching an all-levels class is a really different experience than teaching just advanced students, and it makes you really break things down into the basics and think about why you do absolutely everything. Until next time!

Last night's season finale between the Stars and Blues was a pretty cool goaltending battle that didn't get settled until the shootout. Oettinger made no less than two spectacular saves, and one of them was completely by accident. Towards the end of OT, the Blues had Robert Thomas set up for a perfect one-timer which he set sailing into an empty net. Oettinger knew he was beat and just swung his stick out there like "oh heck, it's going in". What do you know, it caught the puck off the stick and went careening into the corner. Clearly the puck gods were smiling on him last night: You could see it on his face when they were showing the replays on the jumbotron. The other save was when he got caught out of position, and was able to leap across the crease to stop a puck that was going in on the other side: .Binnington also had an excellent evening, but didn't have any amazing saves like those 2. Personally, I'd love to see either the Avs or Stars win the Cup this year, since my Blues are now hitting the links...

I've really enjoyed the show so far. There are significant differences from the previous miniseries and the book, but they make the story interesting in different ways. I was discussing this with my manager in our 1:1 meeting yesterday, and we both commented that in this series, the character of John Blackthorn is the real selfish jerk, which is quite a bit of a departure from both the book and the movie. And the romance between Blackthorn and Mariko was consummated in a very different way. And Hiromatsu's story ended very differently. One thing I've noticed is that even though I have been studying Japanese (on my own time here and there), I'm having an extremely hard time following the dialog without the subtitles. We mentioned that after Karate the other night, and my Sensei told us that his wife is having a really hard time following it too, and she's been getting Japanese tutoring for the past 2 years. It turns out that the reason for that is because apparently the Japanese dialect is what would have been spoken in the late 1600's, much like what we read in a Shakespearean play is the English from the 1600's. I told my wife this interesting factoid, and she asked me, "Well, how do the actors handle it" -- my answer, "Well, most of the Japanese actors are native Japanese speakers. Speaking 1600's era Japanese is no different than us speaking Shakespeare's English. A little effort for a native speaker, but really hard for someone new to the language".

If there's one place that our style is really nitpicky, it's in our Sanchin stance. However, going back to our "function over form" mantra, while I can usually tell if a student's Sanchin stance is off, the way we evaluate the form is by pushing/pulling/striking the student to check how well they resist being unbalanced (both physically and mentally). The intent of our Sanchin stance is that the karateka is rooted to the earth, able to resist being moved by an outside force, balanced and equally able to strike with any of the four weapons. All of our other stances (front stance, low stance/shiko-dachi, cat stance) are typically transition stances in order to enable a specific attack. We tend to use low stances in our forms to drop our center of gravity and set us up for throws and takedowns. The only situations we use a front stance is with a simultaneous front elbow strike -- using our rear leg and weight drop to drive the front elbow into and through an opponent. And our cat stance is typically used in a defensive sequence in conjunction with a crane block (raising the front leg to block a kick). For each of these stances, we stress the "correct form" such that it is the form that enables you to do certain things. Our front stance has the rear leg straight, rear foot flat, and body angled to create a straight line from the heel to the shoulder -- because that creates proper body alignment to transmit force from the heel up through the opposite elbow. The front leg in our cat stance is the way it is... because you can drop the heel, shift the weight forward, and be right back in Sanchin stance. Or you can quickly raise the front leg to block an incoming kick. For us at least, function defines proper form.

Uechi-Ryu tends to prefer effectiveness over aesthetics. Whenever I ask my CI a question about "Why do it this way", any answer he has is almost always based on biomechanics. We were discussing the mechanism for the knee strikes in one of our kata last night, and his explanation went straight to the applications of that technique - how if you do the technique incorrectly, you're liable to lose your balance and fall to the ground, possibly with your opponent on top of you. Likewise, in our two-person drills, we stress proper form not because it's pretty, but because it's what works. When I notice students overextending on their attacks, I'll demonstrate WHY you don't do that; generally I'll have them perform their technique, have them stay where they are, and then tug on their extended arm. If I notice that my partner isn't doing a block correctly in a drill, I'll be sure to set up my attack to expose that flaw in their defense. Proper form for us isn't proper because it's pretty. It's proper form because it's effective.

Given that they've been playing at ASU's arena, I'm surprised they are still even financially viable.

The Blues are still in this thing. They just whomped the Blackhawks 5-2 last night -- 4 goals scored in the first 5 minues of the game, no less.

My Blues are being danged inconsistent when they need to be playing lights-out for their season. Case in point: last Saturday they play the Sharks, who have been losing left and right -- and get shut out 4-0. They get booed off the ice. Come back 2 nights later and beat the red-hot Oilers in overtime. They're now only 3 points out of a playoff spot... so let's see if they can finish the season strong and make the playoffs.

Heck, on casual Fridays I might not even wear pants! (I work from home, so I can get away with this).

Teaching kids and adults tend to be very different experiences, in my experience; the challenges you'll face when teaching kids can be very different from the challenges you'll face teaching adults. If you aren't excited to teach kids and see it as a chore or something you feel you HAVE to do, then... just don't. I have attended several different schools -- some have been run as for-profit businesses, others have been run as a non-profit club where the instructor has another full-time job. I will say that the for-profit businesses always taught kids, and younger students (under 16) were a vast majority of their students (at least 75%). Now IF you choose to teach students AND you do it well AND you can build a reputation for yourself, THEN you can certainly build a foundation of your business with teaching kids. Note: there are a lot of IFs there. In the end, it is your dojo/school. You decide what you want it to look like, and you'll need to figure out what student base you want to gear towards. If you don't genuinely enjoy teaching kids, then just don't. You can make your school work without them, whether you want to be a non-profit club or a for-profit business.

The game on Monday in St. Louis is a big one, then they play in Minnesota on Saturday. Important week for Vegas, a real opportunity to increase separation from teams chasing them. Sorry guys. I'm thinking the Knights are going to be on the outside looking in when the playoffs start, because my Blues are going to pull things together and get that last wildcard spot. LET'S GO BLUES!!!

While I wholeheartedly agree that instructors should generally not berate students, intimidate students, or attempt to/injure students, there is also a very fine line the instructor needs to tread with certain students. As an instructor for advanced youth students (generally 4th kyu and up), I see this frequently. Specifically, we have a number of students who do not have what I would call "the appropriate martial attitude" when it comes to training. For example, in a two-person drill, students get into the habit of kicking to the air next to their partner, or just lazily putting their arm out there for a punch, or just "going through the motions". I see this all the time in bunkai, kotekitae (arm/leg conditioning), and yakusoku kumite. Whenever I train with someone (depending on their rank), I'll give them coaching that this is a bad habit to get into, and encourage them to get into the habit of striking at their opponent. If a student ends up approaching his/her brown belt test and still is having these issues, they end up having a "come to Jesus" meeting with our CI, usually on the dojo floor while doing their dan-level yakusoku kumite, and at this point it's usually a "sink or swim" test. He'll run the drill at the intensity he thinks it should be run at, and he'll add some verbal pressure to the mix. He won't say anything abusive or derogatory to the student, but he will tell them "You have to attack harder", or tell them what they're doing isn't correct, and he'll say it at an elevated voice. His philosophy (which I wholeheartedly agree with) s that a) it's better for the students to learn to deal with pressure in a controlled environment than on the streets, and b) when one of his students is a brown belt (and moreso a black belt), they represent him, and he wants to make sure they've really earned it. For some students it's a hard test to pass. He has made students cry before, and a few have quit over it. However, from my perspective I think he stays well on the "constructive criticism" side of that line.

The (colored) belt ranks are an easily identifiable way of indicating what a student knows, is expected to know, and is expected to be ready to learn. This makes it easy to group students together to work on their rank-appropriate kata and drills. It also makes it easy for a higher-ranked student to determine at what level to train with the student. For example, when I'm training with a white belt, I'll take things much slower and more relaxed than I would with a brown belt. This is especially important in larger schools where you may not know all of the students by name and ability.

Welcome to the forums, Dennis! We're glad to have you here, and I look forward to hearing your insights.

As the saying goes, the only thing harder than winning a Stanley Cup is defending a Stanley Cup -- for multiple reasons: - Winning the Cup means that your team had a much longer playoffs than the rest of the League. This means more time to accumulate all those nagging injuries that can only be healed by rest and recuperation. - Likewise, winning the Cup means you have a shorter offseason to heal those injuries - Finally, with the salary cap, you're going to have players who are coming off contracts, and with a Stanley Cup under their belt, those players are going to be due a raise. Which makes the 3 Cup Finals appearance by the Lightning a few years' back an even more amazing feat.

Holy moly, that's a LOT of posts! If I posted 10 posts per day for a year it would still take me a REALLY long time to get that many posts. And as others have said, they're not just fluff or "me-too" posts. Thank you for all of your contributions!

I've read the original book, and I saw the mini-series many moons ago. In short, I'm liking it quite a bit. I noticed that they didn't tone down the language at all. I'm looking forward to the remaining episodes.

Congratulations!

Congratulations on the unexpected double promotion, and huge props on the Shogo title!