Cool stuff I learned this week

[sensei8]

Great news, aurik all the way around.

My sister had similar shots but it only helped her for 30 minutes before the pain returned. My Cardiologist refuses to allow me to be off Eliquis for any time, so not steroid shots to my T12 and L4...oh well.

Glad that you are able to get to class, even if it's a modified amount of time on the floor. Karate will be there, so get better soon.

Zach...You got this!! Train hard and train well.

[DarthPenguin]

Glad to hear you are back at it Aurik. All the best to Zach for his test too!

[Drew]

Well, it's been awhile since I posted in here, but the updates are pretty good. I decided to get a steroid injection at L2/L3 and L3/L4 -- this provided quite a bit of immediate relief, and I have been doing physical therapy twice a week since the injection. The first day of physical therapy I could barely bend over at the waist, and my waist was very limited in the movements I could do.

Each session I've been trying to push myself a little further than the previous time. If she had me do a set of an exercise with 30 pounds, I'll ask her to bump it up to 35. She has had me working mainly core strength and mobility. Some of the exercises have gone really well, some of them I tried once and just said "nuh-uh". Not because I didn't like them, but because my back/leg told me it was a PATENTLY horrible idea. And she'd see the look on my face and say, "Yeah, let's not do that one". But the good news is that at my last evaluation 2 weeks ago, I've regained almost full range of motion on the back, and the leg, while still a bit weak, is getting better week by week.

I've improved enough that I decided to try out the saturday all-ages class last week. I knew that I'd need to take things easy (and I did), but the important thing was that I was able to get through the entire class and other than being tired (from not trainign much for 2 months), I felt pretty good afterwards. So this week I'll be trying more than just the one class. I'll play things by ear of course, but I definitely want to get back into the swing of things.

Other good news -- Zach got the news that this coming Friday he will be testing for ikkyu. I'm really excited for him. He did last Thursday/Friday/Saturday classes and has been putting forth the effort he needs to, so I'm hoping he'll pass with flying colors.

Hey, sorry to hear you or other are in chronic pain.

Has anyone heard of 'Stem wave' (aka softwave, soundwave, extracorporeal shockwave) therapy? It has changed my life. My back was a wreck from way back when. My chiro has a machine and it largely eliminated the pain. It is like Stem cell therapy. Really quite miraculous.

[aurik]

And now for our regularly scheduled update..

So Zach did successfully test for his ikkyu (you can see the update here. He is now back to regular training and getting up to speed on what he needs for his test for shodan-sho (hopefully at the end of this year). He was the only advanced brown belt in his testing cycle, which meant he had to demonstrate a lot of his techniques all by himself, or with our CI as his partner. While it was a bit rough on him at the time, it's good practice for when he will test for black belt later on.

I've started back in regular classes. The back and leg are still improving, not quite 100%, but good enough to do classes as long I don't do certain things. My endurance and stamina are WAY down, so that's hurting quite a bit. Last night I found myself winded while leading warmups... mainly because trying to count AND do the exercises is considerably harder than when you can breathe when you need to. But that's something I need to work towards.

We have a whole new batch of students in the youth advanced class, and we had a number of students that moved up to the adult class. So Zach and his friend Blake are now pretty much the senior students. I hope that will give Zach motivation to be a good example to the other students. But we shall see. I know he's going to be goofy from time to time, but I hope he can keep it in check to a degree.

Other than that there's not much to tell. Mainly I'm just trying to regain my stamina and form after 2 months off. But the fact that I'm back to training is a VERY good thing.

[bushido_man96]

Great to hear you are back to regular training, Aurik. Those layoffs are stinkers, for sure. I'm sure Zach is going to do great job moving forward as a more senior student, as well.

[DarthPenguin]

Glad to hear that you are back at it.

Look at the positive - stamina etc being way down proves that they were higher before so no reason that they can't be again as you managed it before!

[aurik]

Glad to hear that you are back at it.

Look at the positive - stamina etc being way down proves that they were higher before so no reason that they can't be again as you managed it before!

So i returned to the advanced adult class last night, and boy was it a struggle. I've been using my right side to compensate to a certain degree, and my right hip was REALLY sore yesterday because of it. It slowed me down quite a bit, but as class went on things loosened up quite a bit. I found myself way short of breath (due to the lack of stamina again), but the class was pretty fun as a whole. We started out with junbi undo, and instead of the normal hojo undo, we did a variation of our "across the floor" hojo undo. Normally we pair up with a partner, and each partner steps and strikes. We then step back and perform a counter prescribed by the hojo undo technique. In this case, the attacker would throw two punches, to which we would perform two blocks and then counter. It was a substantially different experience than we normally have.

Our CI then talked about WHY we did it that way today. Our training usually is of the "one block, one counter, one down opponent" a la the budo mindset. Well, in a real conflict, you would have to defend against multiple attacks before your opponent presented an opening to take him out. At that point you do your counter and take him out. He mentioned how this is even more important when dealing with an opponent with a weapon, such as a knife or baseball bat. We train defenses against those, but it's usually a single committed strike -- which rarely happens in real life.

We then performed sanchin, both as a group and individually. Afterwards, Kyoshi gave me some very profound feedback as to the "half hard/half soft" nature of Uechi-Ryu. He said that I don't have to be tense for the entire Sanchin kata. I can give a little if I'm pushed or pulled. However, be prepared to tense the muscles as needed to prevent getting out of position. In my particular case, he was pushing and pulling on my wrists in such a way that pulled my weight forward and up. I was more focused on not letting my arms move, so that I found myself getting unbalanced. I realized afterwards that I needed to focus on "sinking in" and rooting myself into my stance.

Next we did our two-person drills for awhile and then did an extended session of kata. We did group kata, and then we all took a break and did individual kata in front of the instructors, both Seisan and Seiryu (for me, at least). I was finding myself really gassed during the group kata, but once I had a chance to catch my breath, I found that each of my kata felt REALLY good. Kyoshi told me both of the kata looked really solid, and gave me a few places where I needed to think about making changes. For example, in Seisan, there is a point where you slam your opponent's head into your knee, step back into Sanchin, and then perform 3 one-knuckle strikes to the back of the head. Apparently I'm not taking enough time to set in my stance on this and I end up bending over too much (and getting unbalanced). Also I was told in Seiryu I should look at my foot placement such that I can pivot from a good Sanchin stance to a good Sanchin stance (without stepping). Mind you, he has seen grandmasters perform the kata the way I do (at least in this section), but his preference would be that I not have to step.

Overall it was a VERY good class. I had a good amount of exhaustion going on afterwards, but time and exercise will take care of that.

[aurik]

This week has been a mixed bag. The downside -- the steroid injection I got back at the beginning of March has worn off. The bad news is that the pain in the thigh is coming back. It's not nearly as bad as it once was and I'm able to train through it. Last night I went to class and after about 15 minutes things started feeling pretty good. Not great, but the pain diminishes as I am up and moving more. So that's what I'll be doing more of.

Last night was a pretty good class though. I'm finding strength is starting to come back in the left leg -- it's still far from where it once was, and the stamina isn't there, but I can feel an improvement.

The good news is that tonight I'll be attending a seminar hosted at our dojo for Seisho Itokazu (10th dan Uechi-Ryu, 10th dan Matayoshi Kobudo). This is the second time we've hosted him at a seminar (the last time was about 3 years ago). Zach and I will both be attending (our CI opened the seminar up to all adult students and brown belt and above youth students). Itokazu Sensei's father was one of Kanei Uechi's senior students, and he developed the kata Daini Seisan, which eventually became Kanshu (required for shishikjyu/green belt). He is one of the few instructors that still teaches Daini Seisan, as well as Kanshabu (which eventually became Kanshiwa, required for kukyu). So this will definitely be a rare opportunity to get an insight to the history of our style. I'll share more after the seminar.

We have had a number of other Matayoshi Kobudo students visiting our dojo over the past few days -- one of whom was doing a private lesson upstairs yesterday before the 6-7pm adult class (although this is more of an "advanced youth/adult class"). As he walked past after class, I greeted him with a simple "hello". He mumbled a "hello" back. Apparently our CI's wife did NOT hear him say it because she turned to him and said "Mustafa! He just said hello to you. Where are your manners?" She is a stickler for politeness and manners -- if a student doesn't show good manners she will call them out for it. In all fairness I did tell her he DID say hello back, just really quietly.

[bushido_man96]

It's good to hear that moving around is helping with your pain. Motion is lotion.

The seminar sounds like an excellent opportunity. Enjoy that!

[aurik]

So it's been a little while since I checked in here.

I was able to attend the seminar with Itokazu sensei. Sadly, this is likely going to be his last time traveling internationally -- he was in a car accident last year, and between that and his age. he was struggling. We did a lot of hojo undo and got quite a few pointers. We did some good work on Sanchin, and then worked previous versions of some of our kata. There had been talk of doing some one on one kata work after the seminar proper, but unfortunately Itokazu was feeling pretty drained afterwards, so that did not happen.

This past weekend, Zach and I assisted with a dan-level testing board. One of the requirements for students who intend to test for dan grades is that they watch a test (or participate in a mock test), since the testing is much more formalized than kyu gradings. Zach and I clerked for the test -- which means that we collected, collated, and averaged the scores from all of the testing board members. It was an eye-opening experience when you see how the various instructors grade the students and how, at least for first-degrees, the scores are barely passing. For example, one of the segments was 12 points, with 8 required to pass. Most of the students received 8 or 8.5 from the various instructors.

In the end, all of the candidates did pass. We had 3 students pass for shodan-sho, 2 passed for shodan, one new nidan, a sandan, and a godan. Needless to say, the sanchin section of the test for the godan candidate was VERY intense.

The other cool news, since I'm a instructor trainee, I might be able to test for nidan this coming November, which is the same time Zach tests for shodan-sho. It will very much depend on how my back holds up though. I'll need to kick my training up a notch in order to start getting ready.