Cool stuff I learned this week

[aurik]

Today was a very good day. Since our CI has opened the dojo to larger classes (up to 8 students), he's been permitting students to come twice a week. So I've been trying to do at least one (sometimes two) virtual classes in addition to two in-person classes. Also, this week our HOA finally opened up the pool for lap swim. It's limited to 5 people at a time, and you need to sign up in advance, but it was really good to get into a pool and swim some laps. I pretty much grew up on a swim team, so swimming laps is one of my favorite exercises other than the martial arts.

When we all showed up at class today, it was just me, our sensei, and one of my fellow adults who I usually am partnered with (he's about my size), and his two kids (the older one is ~14 and the younger is 8 or so). There were two younger (18'ish) black belts who were supposed to come, but our sensei thinks they were instead planning on going to the afternoon black belt workout in the park.

Since he's now able to do in-person classes, he's started testing some of the students. However, I haven't yet been in a class where he's been doing any of the tests, and he hasn't announced them in advance.

Today we started with a slightly modiified junbi undo, followed by hojo undo, several of them picked out at random. I was feeling pretty strong today and things were feeling pretty crisp on my techniques. We then moved straight into sanchin kata. My technique felt strong and pretty accurate, and my endurance was holding up pretty well. However, instead of doing the second and third times through Sanchin, he had us do our basic kicks. Following this, he walked the other 3 students through Kanshu kata (required for green belt), and I focused on my technique while we went through it.

He then walked us through Kanshu another 2 times for the benefit of the other 3 students, and he said he'd work them through it again. He then asked them to work on that while he asked me to do Kanshu on my own at my own count. He'd been giving me little pointers over the last few months and I tried to put them all into play. I felt REALLY good about that kata -- I think it's one of the best I've done so far. When I finished, he had one correction for me, and it's more a matter of his preferred interpretation. Towards the end of the kata, we do a 90-degree pivot south, step forward followed by a double hiraken-tsuki to the opponent's eyes, followed by a 180-degree pivot north. In my kata I did the pivot-step-strike, pause, turn around. What he wanted me to do was pivot-step, pause/set, then strike and turn with no pause. At this point I'm feeling really good about that kata, because he's now giving me interpretation corrections instead of basics or technique corrections.

He then asked me to do Seichin (kata for brown belt). I'm still very much learning this kata, but it's improved quite a bit in the past couple of weeks. I managed to get through the whole kata without any major errors, and he didn't give me any corrections for that. I found that.. interesting. He almost always gives some kind of correction -- since this is a kata that's technically above my grade level, maybe he just wants to see me get the basics of it down first.

He then watched the other students do Kanshiwa bunkai (since they are family, they can do 2-person drills). After that, he asked us all to do Kanshiwa. I tried to pace myself on this and focused on improving my technique. After we all did Kanshiwa, he asked us to go through the offensive side of our kicking drill. He asked the two youth students to announce the techniques, and I followed along with what I felt was one of my better performances. This happens to be one of those drills where it's a lot easier to do it with a partner, since at certain points of the drill, the partner's block will help set you up for the next technique (especially true for the two spin kicks in the drill).

After the kicking drill, he lined us up to bow out. After we did our closing bows, he announced promotions for all of us -- 4th kyu for me, and 7th kyu for the other 3 students. It was a very nice surprise, and I felt that today I'd put in one of my best performances of those techniques so far.

Here are some pics taken by the other adult student:

https://i.imgur.com/azz9c0e.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/RBbymEG.jpg

When I got home, I shared the news with the Mrs and Zach. Zach was understandably disappointed because he hasn't yet been tested. A part of me knows that it's partly due to his age -- since he's not eligible to test for shodan-sho (junior black belt) until he is 11 or 12, our instructor is trying to space things out a little so he doesn't have a really long wait once he gets to the brown belt ranks. The other issue is that honestly he doesn't always try his best. There are times when our sensei has to remind him to get his kicks up, especially if he's not working with an opponent. I encouraged him as best as I could, and he seemed to cheer up a bit when I told him that I'm always willing to work with him on whatever he wants to.

After that, we went to the local archery range and shot our bows for an hour and a half or so. I'm shooting a 60lb compound, and we've got him a 15lb recurve. Since the range was doing a father's day promotion, there were a LOT of brand new people there, so we could only shoot at 10 yards.

I discovered on about my 3rd or 4th set of arrows that I really shouldn't be shooting at 10 yards anymore, as two different times I heard the *smack* of two arrows hitting each other, instead of the satisfying "thump" of arrows sinking into the paper and target. At least I didn't destroy any arrows in the process -- good arrows are not cheap ($10-15 each). Zach is definitely getting better with his bow as well, at 10 yards almost all of his arrows were in the blue, with at least half in the red.

Once that other family left, we moved back to the 20 yard line, and I was still able to keep most of my arrows in the red (Zach wasn't doing quite that well, but most of his were still on the paper). After awhile, my left rotator cuff started bothering me, so I sat and watched Zach every other round.

On the way out of the range, I showed my arrow with the damaged nock to the lady who was running the place. She told me that I really needed to replace that nock, or it would give out at the worst possible moment. At least it's only a $1 repair, and she can have it done tomorrow.

All in all it was a REALLY good day.

[Bulltahr]

Good work Aurik! Feels good alright!!

Here's a few pics of my Sunday morning (Today), shortest Sunday of the year we do our mid-winter beach training, ending up in the water... Wasn't too cold today, above freezing anyway.

That's me, the silver fox, senior Kyu grade in the seiza pic.

It's an awesome club, heaps of depth and experience amoungst the senior dan grades.

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[sensei8]

Great news and updates and pictures, aurik and Bulltahr; thank you for sharing!!

Normal live is slowly returning outside of ones home as schools have reopened their doors, and the two of you have certainly prospered in your MA training during this pandemic.

[aurik]

Things have been settling into something resembling a "new normal" over the past month or two. Zach attends a Tuesday youth class, I attend a Tuesday adult class, and we attend a Saturday class together. Since Zach and I live in the same household, we can actually touch each other during 2-person drills. Since I'm now supposed to be learning the new "Dan kumite" for sankyu through shodan, it's really helpful for me to work with Zach, even if he doesn't have the same power, speed, or size as an adult.

Since Zach is going to be at a birthday party (for the neighbor twins -- one of whom has been in his class for each of the past 3 years, alternating on and off) tomorrow, our Sensei asked me if we'd like to come to tonight's advanced class. In this class, we were the lowest ranked students there -- there was a sankyu, an ikkyu (starting on his test prep cycle), and 4 shodan-sho's (junior 1st degree).

As part of the testing prep cycle (some will be testing in December, I think), our CI starts drilling the candidates on what will be on the test. For example, all of the supplementary exercises were done at random and in Japanese (only). During the hojo undo and sanchin, he made it a point to pick on the candidates' basics, and I made lots of mental notes on where our Sensei was offering corrections.

For example, our style is considered a half-hard half-soft style, and one of our fundamental techniques is the circular block (sometimes called wa-uke). He talked to us how it's training us to block all the different "sections" of the body, and while in a kata, the wa-uke is done in a full (or 3/4) circle, in practice you'll tend to execute just the segment you need. He then showed us several examples that on the surface looked like very different blocks, but then showed us how they're all just sections of the wa-uke.

Next, he asked the candidate where the wa-uke should be hard and where it should be soft -- the candidate couldn't answer, but I guessed (correctly) that it should be at the end, where you're making contact with your opponent and then grabbing and pulling him. He then showed how you can use sanchin stance along with the grab to effectively control/neutralize an opponent, while a weak or off-balance grab can potentially leave you more susceptible than your opponent.

I've had this described to me before while warming up for a test by one of the other instructors (around hachikyu/shichikyu), but today hearing that again really sunk in.

After class, we had a nice swim at our HOA pool (it's open with restrictions -- you have to reserve a slot in advance, etc), and since the swim was at the end of the day the lifeguard started setting up the lane ropes for the next morning's swim. Zach made me super proud by volunteering to help the lifeguard set up the lane ropes by swimming them across the pool. He struggled a bit, but he didn't give up!

Tonight, when we went out for dinner, I asked Zach if he was paying attention to what our Sensei was telling the black belt candidates. He remembered a little bit of it, but not all of it. I then told him that when he hears our Sensei giving corrections to another student, especially one more advanced than you, that you should pay attention and see if that's something you can apply to your own karate. I told Zach that Sensei was correcting the candidates' basics, and he should try to remember what Sensei was telling the other students. I told him this was primarily because if you can make those corrections now and be aware of those things now, then you might not develop bad habits that need to be corrected when you're getting ready to test for black belt.

He seemed to understand that, and I'm hoping that he can start paying better attention when our Sensei talks about these things. Over the last few weeks he's grown quite a bit mentally and emotionally, so I'm hoping this will sink in with him.

[aurik]

Tonight's workout: Uechi-Cardio:

Warmups

Basics (blocks, punches, kicks, etc)

Hojo undo

Sanchin x3

Bag work, working 2 and 3 punch combinations

Then to end it all off, start with sanchin and do every kata you know nonstop. If our Sensei is still going, repeat.

I made it through two full iterations of sanchin/kanshiwa/kanshu/seichin without stopping more than a couple of seconds after each to reposition.

That was a great workout, and I'll need to remember that last part for at-home work.

[Wayofaswede]

Congratulations on the promotion and for sharing those pics.

[aurik]

It's been a little while since I've posted in here, so it's definitely time for an update. I'm currently working towards my brown belt, working on two difficult pieces of material. Our seichin kata has a couple of pretty difficult sequences in it that I'm working on the subtleties -- one is a reverse step followed by a complex hooking block (back hand does a small circular block under the chin, front hand does a low sweeping block, and front leg comes up in a crane block, ending in a cat stance). The second one is a back leg circular block, front leg sweeping block, front leg coming up to a crane block ending in a cat stance.

I can get those sequences 3 out of 4 times now, but every so often I'll try to mash them together too quickly and my center of gravity will be too high and I'll be unbalanced through the sequence.

The second part I'm working on is our dan kumite sequence. This is a more flowing two-person drill than we do for yellow belt or green belt ranks. I've been learning it in individual pieces, but the partner I've been working with (who just earned his 2nd degree) is used to doing it in one flowing drill. The good thing was Tuesday night I was able to run through it with him about 4 times and I'm starting to get the hang of it. I'm getting pretty comfortable with the "attacker" side, partly because I can control the tempo. The "defender" side I'm struggling with because my partner controls the tempo.

For example, the attacker side of #1 is "step in with a lunge punch, shuffle step back with a low block, shuffle step back in with another lunge punch, then do a 'hop and change your feet' with a gedan barai uke'". After which I reset my stance and move to the next one. That little pause gives my brain a chance to catch up (and me a chance to change my breath).

Here's what our seichin kata looks like:

and this is the dan kumite I'm referring to:

Now for the REALLY BIG news. Today Zach tested for (and passed) his next rank! Our sensei ran the test during our normal class, but it wasn't a surprise (since he told all the parents ahead of time). Zach looked really good in his hojo undo and kata. He did struggle a bit with the spinning hook kick and spinning back kicks in our kicking drill, but our instructor expects students at that rank to struggle a bit with those.

Here are the pics of Zach and his shiny new diploma

As always I told him how super proud I am of him!

[sensei8]

Congrats Zack for earning Gokyu; a milestone rank. Gokyu is like what Wednesday is considered...hump day...middle of the week...half way to Saturday. In that, Gokyu is hump day...middle of the Kyu system...half way to Shodan.

aurik, you're training is exciting to read about each time; it makes me so proud of you and Zack across the board. It also allows me to think WAY back to where you both are at in your training. Memories in ones MA journey are priceless and they should never be forgotten.

I smile each and every time you share the struggles that you both are experiencing on your MA journeys because I've been where you both are, as so has so many other MAists in their own MA journey; if it was easy, everyone would be doing it, and not everyone's doing the MA.

Knowledge and experience should always take precedence over rank, and you both are deeply involved in the knowledge and experience each and every time you both step onto the floor to train hard and to train well. By your post, aurik, rank doesn't have precedence over knowledge and experience; always be proud of your rank because it took a lot of blood, sweat, tears...and a ton of hard work to EARN said ranks.

Proud of you both!!

Train hard, and train well!!

[bushido_man96]

Congrats, Zack!

[aurik]

Congrats Zack for earning Gokyu; a milestone rank. Gokyu is like what Wednesday is considered...hump day...middle of the week...half way to Saturday. In that, Gokyu is hump day...middle of the Kyu system...half way to Shodan.

aurik, you're training is exciting to read about each time; it makes me so proud of you and Zack across the board. It also allows me to think WAY back to where you both are at in your training. Memories in ones MA journey are priceless and they should never be forgotten.

I smile each and every time you share the struggles that you both are experiencing on your MA journeys because I've been where you both are, as so has so many other MAists in their own MA journey; if it was easy, everyone would be doing it, and not everyone's doing the MA.

Knowledge and experience should always take precedence over rank, and you both are deeply involved in the knowledge and experience each and every time you both step onto the floor to train hard and to train well. By your post, aurik, rank doesn't have precedence over knowledge and experience; always be proud of your rank because it took a lot of blood, sweat, tears...and a ton of hard work to EARN said ranks.

Proud of you both!!

Train hard, and train well!!

Thank you for the encouragement! I really didn't want to put it this way to Zach, because while he is halfway (rank-wise) to shodan, he still has at least 2-3 more years before he's eligible to test for shodan-sho (junior shodan), and he won't be able to test for full shodan for 5-6 years after that (due to minimum age requirements). I'm going to have to do what I can to keep him motivated as the time between gradings increase.

As for me, I'm feeling that in many ways I'm halfway to shodan myself. I've now been training here for about 2 years, and I've probably got another 1.5-2 years before I'm eligible to test for shodan. I've now learned most of the material for shodan, except seisan kata and bunkai. Looking back, I can see/feel how my speed, power, and technique have improved, but unfortunately my CV conditioning has not. I really need to take the next 1.5 years to work on that so that doesn't hold me back.

I'm finding you guys to be a big source of encouragement as I post each of my updates. Thank you all