Cool stuff I learned this week

[aurik]

Those times when instructors really seem to open up and present things to you like that are especially enlightening. Especially with a good instructor.

Since I'm not a Karate stylist, and I've not retained much of what I've learned of the Karate vocabulary, can you please explain to me what "shime" is?

Shime in this context is a concept specific to Uechi-Ryu (and possibly a couple of other Okinawan styles). One might interpret it as "focus". The idea is that the instructor is checking a student's focus while performing the Sanchin kata by pulling, pushing, and/or striking the student in a number of key areas. Per my sensei, he's primarily looking to see how much force it takes to make the student move, and that they are flexing the appropriate muscle groups to protect themselves.

One thing I learned quite early is NOT to push back against the instructor, but to focus your energies DOWNWARD into the floor. The one time I pushed back against one of our instructors pushing against me, she shouted "A-HA", and gave a quick tug on my belt and my stance came completely undone.

Here is a video of Shinjo sensei performing Shime testing on his brother at a demonstration:

[bushido_man96]

Thanks for sharing that. It answers my question very well. The breaks at the end were impressive, too.

[aurik]

Wow, has it really been over a month since I posted here? Time flies, but it's been a lot of the same.

Things have changed a bit at the dojo -- as our county and state have moved down the COVID "danger scale" from red to orange to yellow, we've had more people attending in-person classes. He has been adding in new training tools from time to time, and adding in tools which we haven't used in awhile.

One tool he's brought into play is the weighted jars. He has jars weighted at 10lbs or 5lbs, and we hold them and do Sanchin kata. For the 10lb (plastic) jar, you perform the Sanchin opening, then reach down, pick up the jar, and hold it as if you're in Sanchin kimae. At each count, you press the jar out ahead of you at a measured pace, retract it, and then step. Everytime you thrust in the kata, you do the same with the jar. This seems REALLY easy at first, but by the time you're done with the kata, your shoulders, lats, and pecs are definitely feeling it. After the second rep, things get REALLY tired.

Another tool he's brought back is kick repetitions. We work as partners, one holding a hand pad and the other kicking. The first set we do one kick per count (generally front kicks, to a count of 5). The second set we do two kicks per count.-- snap kick up, touch the ground to reset, then kick again. He had us work our way up to five kicks per set, and by the end of them my legs were pretty much jell-o. He then told us that when he was training with Master Thompson, he'd work his way up to ten per count... and then back down to 1. The goal of this is to make your front kicks fast (and to increase your stamina, of course).

He's also started using me more and more as an assistant instructor to a degree. For example, if I'm the only brown/black belt in the class, he'll have me work with the white belts on their technique exercises for part of the class, and then he'll work with me 1:1 on my kata.

This past week, he did something I hadn't yet seen. He reserved about 15 minutes at the end of class for kata, and we'd start at kanshiwa (required for yellow belt ranks). He'd step us through the kata, and as soon as anyone made a mistake, he'd have us stop and restart. He wouldn't let the class progress to kanshu until no one made a mistake. I think we went through Kanshiwa about 6 times before were able to move on to Kanshu. Kanshu took about 4 times before we moved to Seichin. We ran Seichin another 3 times before running out of time. Training like that definitely works both the physical and mental aspects.

On a slightly different note, my wife and I have both started a keto diet - she started last month and I started on Ash Wednesday for Lent. Hopefully this will help me kick-start some new weight loss goals for the year. My wife has to do it because she's trying to control her diabetes -- I probably should be doing it because I've gained more weight over COVID than is good for me. I'll keep y'all up to date on how things go on this.

Until next time!

[bushido_man96]

Good stuff, aurik! Glad to hear things are starting to get back to near normal for your school.

[aurik]

So over the last couple of weeks I've been focusing on strengthening my shoulders/upper body on my off-days. I've been starting with a moderate number of push-ups, adding a couple per session (goal is to hit 49 by my birthday in July -- more on that later). I have then been working my sanchin kata with kettlebells. For Monday and Wednesday, I used a 25lb kettlebell, and for each strike in sanchin, I'd press the kettlebell out to full extension, pause, and then bring it back. On Monday I was unable to complete the full kata before my shoulders shouted "ENOUGH!". On Wednesday, I completed the full kata, and on Friday I did a second run through where instead of a single 25lb kettlebell, I used a pair of 15lb kettlebells, and alternated lifting them to my chin with each step.

This Monday, I did the push-up routine followed by Sanchin with a 35lb kettlebell. I was able to make it through the entire kata, with my shoulders begging and screaming for relief towards the end. I felt pretty good at the end of that. Zach, however saw what I was doing, and asked if I could use him in the same way (he's about 60lbs). So I figured I'd give it a try. I picked him up under the armpits easy enough, but as soon as I got him to about half extension, my arms said "uh, nope!".

Well, that's something to work towards.

Well now we get to training in class. Last night our CI broke out the weighted jars and the chi ishi again. Unfortunately my shoulders were still recovering from the beating I gave them yesterday. Fortunately I think he saw the look of "oh crap" on my face when he went for the weighted jars and elected to skip me on that. When we did the chi ishi work, I was able to work from the heavy end for the forearm work, but once we moved to the shoulder work, I had to move my grip up towards the lighter end.

Last night we had a really small group -- only six students, so he had the higher ranks (4th kyu and up) working dan kumite with his wife, and he worked the other 3 students on the drills for their level. I'm starting to get pretty confident in the dan kumite and things are starting to flow a bit smoother. There are still areas I feel a bit awkward in, but I'm hoping those don't show as much as I feel them. We then finished by running through all the rank kata twice and called it a day.

One thing I have noticed in the past couple weeks from working my shoulders so hard is how much stronger my strikes feel (to me). I'm now hearing a distinct "snap" when I'm wearing my gi and things just feel a lot faster and more powerful. I've got kettlebells ranging up to 28kg (62lbs), so I'll see how far I can get up there. The 16kg (35lb) feels massive when I try to hold it at arms length, so this may take quite awhile. It's the former powerlifter in me that wants to see how far I can push this

Oh, and as for the 49 push-ups... our dojo has a tradition that if you come to class on your birthday, your "present" is to do a number of push-ups equal to your age. I'll be 49 this July, so there ya go

Until next time!

[bushido_man96]

Sounds like things are moving along quite nicely! It's great that you are able to get back into class, too. So good to hear.

[sensei8]

So exciting to know that the training continues no matter what you're facing, like this pandemic. The fire's still burning bright as ever in your MA training, and that, that is what the floor reveals. You're on top of it, and you're training not as you have too, but as you want to.

[aurik]

So yesterday was a REALLY good day. Not just a good day. One of the best days at the dojo I've had in a VERY long time.

It started out in the morning when I got my first dose of the COVID vaccine. Colorado has recently opened up the vaccine to everyone over 50, and those from 16-49 who have one contributing factor. I'm overweight (which is a contributing factor), and I'm definitely going to use that to get my shot ASAP. I've already got my second dose scheduled for late April. So far my only side-effects are a slightly sore shoulder, which is to be expected.

My wife took Zach to his classes, and one of the things Zach told me was "Sensei kicked me in the face". He said that it was because he didn't block correctly, and I have a lot of faith in our CI, but I figured I'd bring that up to him. Our Sensei mentioned how he basically put his foot up beside their face and tried to get the kids to actually block it, and he also worked with the kids on how to keep your balance when your opponent disrupts your kicks.

Today's class was more "cerebral" than physically exhausting. We've been training for the past year in a "no-touch" environment -- for example when we train two-person drills, it's more like a choreographed dance than a karate demonstration.

Today that changed (to a certain degree).

He started out the class talking about using two-handed blocks. Our most common block, the mawashi-uke, is typically done with the blocking hand making a inward-to-outward funnel motion that finishes with the hand reset in our typical kamae. At least that's how it's done at lower kyu levels in drills and all kyu levels in kata. Well, at rokkyu/gokyu or so, he expects us to add a supporting hand to the block in our drills -- the block begins with the supporting hand guiding the attack off the centerline, and finishes with the blocking hand finishing the block and (optimally) grabbing the opponent at or above the elbow, and then when the defender returns to sanchin, that action can potentially pull the attacker off-balance.

He had us work this a bit, and then he started striking at us (for the first time in over a year) -- depending on how well the student did, he'd up his game and see if he could tag them. For me the hardest part was remembering to reset my supporting hand -- which is important if there's a second punch coming right after the first one.

We then worked on blocking kicks. The first way he mentioned (useful for front kicks) is to take a step back, use one hand to guide the attacking foot partway off the centerline, and then use the other hand to finish moving the foot out of the way and (optimally) catch the attacker's heel to drag him off-balance a bit. We worked that a bit, with him trying harder and harder to tag us. The nice thing about this technique is as long as you can get that backwards step in, even if you slightly flub the hand technique, you've backed up enough that you're out of his "power band" so he can't really can't hit you hard.

We then worked parts of our kyu kumite drill against him to get us used to actually working with an opponent disrupting our techniques a bit. For one thing, when you actually have an opponent blocking your techniques, it tends to slow things down a bit. One of the things I'd struggle with when working my drills against young, fast opponents in a no-contact environment is that I could do the blocking technique easy enough, but the subsequent techniques I'd be struggling to keep up with them. However, when that block disrupts their technique a bit, that also slows them down so that I can keep up.

The next drill we worked was our kicking drill. This drill gives the defender a chance to really disrupt his opponent. The defender has 3 blocks in this one, a mawashi uke, a crane block (raise the defending leg and place the same-side elbow atop the knee to basically block your entire body from knee to head), and the sweeping block. Our CI mentioned that when used against a front kick, you can use the mawashi-uke to really disrupt the attacker -- basically you step back into a low stance, which takes your body out of your opponent's "power band" for the kick, and then you catch the kick by stopping it with one hand and then pulling the other hand up under the heel. Again, this only works because you're backing just out of your opponent's range. Then you stand back up into sanchin, and depending on how much you dislike your opponent, you either drop the foot, shuck it off to the side slightly, or violently push him backwards.

With the crane block, he mentioned how you can also control how much you disrupt your opponent depending on whether you step back (allowing your opponent to get the full kick off), stand your ground (preventing him from getting the kick up to full power), or step in (possibly preventing the kick from happening at all). These are things he'd talked about in the past, but again with COVID we haven't been able to touch each other with our drills, so this was a good refresher. When I had the chance to be the attacker, my kicks were noticeably better than when I do them against the air, and as the defender, I took the advice of "disrupting your opponent" to heart, doing my best to throw him off his game, standing my ground on most of the kicks, and even stepping in when he did the spinning hook kick.

He then discussed that when you're actually touching each other, Dan Kumite becomes basically a big flow drill. He took several elements out of it to illustrate how the defender's actions help set up the attacker's next attack and so forth. Since I had only really been working this in a no-touch environment, this was entirely new information for me. He worked with our nidan to illustrate a few of the techniques, and then he worked with me on one of the other techniques, and showed me that if I pulled the attacker's arm down just so after blocking his shuto uchi, then that would both set me up for a roundhouse kick and him up for his cross block.

It was probably my best day at the dojo since COVID hit -- the sensation of actually attacking and defending again with the "smack" of striking and blocking is something I have sorely missed.

On another note, something else I've apparently sorely missed is our kote kitae and ashi kitae (forearm and leg/foot conditioning). I've been trying to keep up with as I can remember, but there were a couple months where I didn't do any at all and I'm definitely feeling it.

The good news is that our governor recently announced that the vaccine should be available to everyone over 16 by mid-April, so once our adult students start getting vaccinated, we can let things go back to a new normal.

[bushido_man96]

Sounds like a fun class! Also, great that you are starting to get back to some contact work.

[sensei8]

Sounds to me that everything is working out for you on and off the floor! Train hard, and train well.