A Dark Side Adventure

Friday – on my feet all day on a concrete floor so Intuflow to music - great way to ease out the aches. That leads into Sanchin flow stuff, I really like this. Feels very good. The movement seems better somehow with music, I must relax more - i’ll have to keep the feeling of that movement in my head.

Monday – Ashihara tonight. Hard warmup with the usual pushups, situps,leg raises, all good. Strong and hard basics – strikes, blocks, kicks - lots of complex kicks and kicking combos. Definitely less robotic than Gkr, lots of fundamental differences. My kicking is horrible. Then sabaki drills leading to partner work. Takedowns pulling back into the void with headlock and a kind of full body lock which was new fun. Also taking out the knees pushing them forward and applying the lock from on their back. Some of this works well for short women, some of it simply doesn’t. Of course the execution can only improve…

A real plus with Ashihara is that the emphasis is on moving well and striking hard. Theyre less intensely pedantic about technique. The other white belts flail but move and strike better than I do. I’m stiff and precise by comparison, too worried about getting it just right. But I’ll learn!

Tuesday – teaching night – goods kids/beginners class, usual mayhem. Senior class – got them working on stances and moving, strength exercises, thrust kicks, sparring. Very gkr but no backward blocks and no air strikes. Need to move these guys towards grading soon, have to comply at least partially with curriculum. The ethical issues continue to grow…

Wednesday – GKR Senior training – an open class for all grades to practise basics and work on technique for grading. Some partner combination work.

I didn’t really enjoy this class. Too much time spent talking about technique while the class sat down. My partner wouldn’t hit me or kick me hard even when I asked her to. The combos were dumbed down. Sigh.

I can’t do this gkr much longer. I love teaching karate but I can’t/won’t teach it exactly the way they want me to. And I’m having huge issues with my own training – I’m mentally debating nearly everything in class. My kata is still not good enough.

Ashihara is strong and hard and functional but … seems to be like kickboxing in drag. And theres no flow.

I don’t know.

Saturday – resting up… long walk round the lagoon, a little Sanchin and elbow flow

Sunday – long walk. Not exactly training I know but its a hard fast walk for an uninterrupted hour and I get bonus time for thinking. Then a return to my circuit, at last. Just stuff thats fun and only for as long as its fun. Start with the bag – slaps, open hand strikes, elbows. Then Sanchin. Then clubbells. The elbow drill (focus mitt strapped to a pillar on the deck). Then kicks on the bag. Then inside – spinal rocks, quad hops, some stretches, medecine ball situps and rolling around stuff. About 3/4 hour. Then a glass of wine…

Monday – Shorter walk 3/4 hour. Elbow flow, Sanchin. Ashihara tonight, great class. Plyometric exercises involving jumping over stuff, horrible for short legged people… then kata Ju Do which I like. Stretches, then knife attack partner work – great fun, never done this before. learnt a whole lot.

Tuesday Teaching Night – good kids class, finished with a self defense drill. The kids sit on the floor in a circle and i get a group of strong guys (fathers and senior students) to go in and drag a nominated child out of it. The kids have to fight as hard as they can, using any and all weapons, not to be dragged out of that circle. Usually get the strong guys padded up a bit. The aim is to get the kids to understand just how strong adults are, just how hard they have to be able to fight to get away, where to hurt the bad guys to make them let go.

Seniors – partner leg warmups (thanks to Chris McK) then continued some combos that they had to make up and teach every one else. Then a sabaki drill leading to a shearing take down – generally badly performed, we’ll need to work on this a lot more. Me as well. Kata, strength drills, conditioning.

Wednesday – no karate shock horror!!!  went to see Coldplay. Just amazing, what a good night…Did a kind of Intuflow dance all night…very very late…

Thursday  – very tired for some reason.. .just some Intuflow and Sanchin, working on the mechanics of the strike – flow flow flow.

Friday – light – intuflow, stretching, Sanchin

Saturday – back on the neglected walking circuit round the lagoon. I’ve been missing this stuff, need the meditation at the moment. Tried out Marcus’s elbow flow, nice.

Sunday – big walk out along the sandspit, got rid of multiple cobwebs. Elbow flow on the punching bag.

Today – off work so today was just a gift! Beautiful morning, lagoon walk. Intuflow. Clubbells. Sanchin. 

Tonight was Ashihara – focus drill leading to scissor takedowns, totally hilarious.  I’m so not a natural but I got enough out of it to want to try more. Then stretching. Relatively light and controlled kumite, no head strikes. One white belt guy was going way to hard, whacked me in the lip, but I’m learning and gave him a little lesson. Then a new kata – “Ju Do”?  – a lot like gkr stuff. This was the first thing they’ve done I can say was easy for me and fun because it was new. Finished with the usual diabolical strength drills. got to try out the elbow drills on their makawara pole things, worked better than on the bag.

 A good fun night. Might have to back to the Friday sparring class again I think.

Am going to refocus on Sanchin, its been neglected while I flail around doing all sorts of other stuff. Working on expansion/contraction, can’t cope with too much more than that. Going to try to do a little every day.

Tuesday Teaching night - numbers were up in both classes, very pleasing. Senior group – working on a partner sabaki drill with outside “block” and arm control with variations. Will continue to build on this because it is effective and theres such a lot to develop from it. Also working on core/leg/arm strength. Finished with conditioning.

Wednesday night GKR  – usual basic combo things followed by some nice partner work using – well well well –  Marcus’s flow drill (with a gkr flavour). Big aha moments for everyone who had done it at the seminar! Developed it into kick and takedown applications. I have great fun with these, working on sinking and sheering, limb control, footwork.

Of course once we’ve successfully taken someone down I guess we’re expected to just run away or something because we don’t actually do anything with them once they’re there, kinda ridiculous. Sigh.

Monday Ashihara – coming along a little better each time, know what to expect. About half an hour of strength/fitness stuff – variations on pushups/situps/leg raises/multiple kicks etc. Then a long session on a progressive boxing style combo with partner and heavy focus pads. This is a good challenge for me because even the pad work is very interactive and works the arms hard – have to hold the bloody things up so high! Then some avoid-the-grab and takedown work and kata with bunkai to finish. The kata is an extended combo of their basic techniques – simple and direct.

Interesting – they use IUPA principles I’m becoming familiar with – sheering, sinking, hyper-function, voids – but they don’t identify or define them. They show what works, very nice functional techniques, but they don’t hit on why they work or how to use the concepts to progress from one application to the next. I got to contribute just a little, how funny.

So I’d grade them 10/10 for effort and 3/10 for comprehension! Oh thats a bit rough – sounds very arrogant, specially from a puny little white belt, not meant to be. Its just interesting.

Tuesday teaching night:  Usual fun kids and beginners class. They all just love focus pad work. Gkr’s curriculum requires a huge amount of air-kihon – what is just fantastic is how incredibly much the strength and intensity of the karate improves when they actually have something to hit!  Plus they learn something about actual targetting and how impact feels, so focus work is now a big part of what I do.  Slowly persuading some of the Dads to train instead of just watching. I’ll have to get some bigger gear though because one of the new guys kicks nearly shredded my little kiddy pads!

Senior class – One of my aims for this class when I started it was that it should be collaborative so this time everyone had to contribute a combination and teach it to the group (got through about 5 of them, will finish the rest next week).  This was challenging for the white belts but they did well. Interspersed some physical challenges such as plyometric pushups - try to give them some new diabolical thing each week. Then sparring and CQ stuff with one partner pushed up against the walls. Went real slow with this, the potential for death and catastrophe huge, will build intensity very gradually over time.

Wednesday night – Gkr Senior training: Killer long fighting stance combo work (so stuffs the hips) followed by kata. I’m really trying to polish Sepai and Hangetsu, can see some improvement but still a long way to go, especially stances and timing. It’s so robot-ryu but I’ll do them that way a while longer until technically better and then I want to deconstruct and flow them and see what they look like.

One of the young full time guys has been promoted to a regional instructor’s position and the tradition is that he has to spar everyone in the dojo, starting from lowest ranks finishing with the senior instructor – he got about 45 rounds but held up well. He’ll remember that night for a while.

Light day Saturday. Some bag work, kata, a little Intuflow.

Sunday – excellent group seminar with Marcus and Darren. Felt very good to be immersed in Uechi for a change. Totally enjoyed the kotikitae variations, interaction of brain and body – can see so much more in this to explore further. I just need to find a partner in crime….

Always principles – sinking, relaxation, sheering – and the whole less is more thing. Also got a wee demo of arm conditioning/pounding  – nice.

Monday – Different playground – Ashihara. Hard, physical class as usual. Stunning warmup involving focus pads and striking/kicking/pushups/situps counting from ten to one and back etc. I had a large guy as a partner – huge hitter – was NOT going to let him knock me backwards, bloody hard work. I need to work on striking and kicking impact thats obvious, very weak. We did a range of fighting combos using the big square shields then moved onto a little grappling stuff. Had a female partner by this stage, so not intimidating – it was awesome fun.