A Dark Side Adventure

Back to Ashihara – good hard training tonight, I’ve missed it. The usual intensive strength stuff – pushups, situps, leg raises, squats and also chinups which i cannot do (yet) and hopping on one leg for a minute – 4 times. Long leg stretches, and splits. Coped quite well. Then sabaki combos –  first in the air, then on the big bags, then with partner.

I struggle most with the jumping spinning kicks but actually its all hard. Completely different dynamics. I’m totally impressed with the intensity of the striking/kicking and the functionality. And the class is constant action, very little downtime, no lengthy explanations. A quick demo then just do it. Lots to learn, very very good for me.

Local tournament today, some of my students competing so went along to support and ended up spending most of the day there refereeing, judging etc. My guys did well, everyone finished up with something, very positive.

Got home in time for a late, dark walk -  about an hour – misty and mysterious around the lagoon and up the river, very very good. Completely love this.

Then weights – 10x20kg on the bench, definitely working muscles that don’t normally get worked that way. I want this to get a lot easier before I up the weight level. Then 50 leg lifts fast and 50 squats with the 20kg bar low.

Finish with spinal rocks and some exercises from the physio, a little shoulder/sanchin stuff, a little yoga.

Thursday – worked late, stuff to sort, so just silly king fu movie night. Actually silly chinese swordfighting movie night…badly dubbed and totally cheesy, I just love these. We’ve had The One Armed Swordsman, Return of the One Armed Swordsman, The new One Armed Swordsman, The Golden Sword, and The Sword of Swords. Can’t wait for next week.

Friday – lagoon walk short circuit about 40 minutes – used to take an hour. Bleak but still beautiful, amazingly low tide.

Then weights. Still playing with these, feeling my way.  20kg 10×5 . Then 50 leg lift things, fast no stopping. Then 50 squats with the 20kg bar just held low. I want to get this wieght stuff to the point where its  hard/sore and no further. Might be about right!

Then spinal rocks, medicine ball situps, little yoga, glass of wine. Intuflow to music.

Tuesday Teaching night – first class numbers down to 35 (!!) Only an hour so limited what we can accomplish – usual basics plus sparring. Split a small group off for tournament practise for this coming Saturday.

Senior Group – hard warmup then tournament stuff  – kata and kumite. Then moving and kicking, combinations of kicks, moving in long stance striking with partner. Then finished with 50 situps, the plank, leg swoops and quad squats just to give them a little taste of the Dark Side…

Quote was from me for change, my usual thing about the most important muscle being the brain.

Wednesday night Senior training – mainly an evolving combination of strikes blocks kicks and counters supposedly teaching reaction and targeting. Janet and I as usual jumped the gun, beat each other up. I haven’t laughed so much in ages. Finished with a nasty little exercise involving using the partner for balance and doing sets of 50 highish round kicks without putting the leg down. Sensei was talking about blading the body for the kicks, I was thinking opening the lower qua… A little Sanchin in front of the mirrors after class. Still just trying to relax enough to get the moving working properly.

Weekend -  huge lot of commitments to do so only managed a walk on Sunday.

Monday – Short Dark Side Circuit:

- Intuflow to music, elbows,  moving into flowing kata and finishing with aerobic karate stuff – 35mins

- Spinal rocks about 60, these are improving, significantly more flexibility, yay

- Medecine ball situps 60

- weights- arms – 20kg 10×3, then legs 20kg 20×5 fast with 5 sec breaks

- leg swoops x 20

- yoga stretches to warm down

Note to self – do the lifting first before the arms are already tired from the other stuff.

Good fun, enjoyed it.

Wednesday – Senior training – sparring to start. Only fought women. My current experiment is to constantly come forward, drive the other person backwards. A reasonable battering. Good fun but… I’m frustrated with the format now. Point scoring fixated. Too many reverse stomach punches. Then kata  – Taigyoku shodan, nidan, Saifa, Bassai-dai, Seiunchin, Empi, Sanseryu. The weeks of physio and the anti-flams are having a positive effect , nice to have better flexibility without pain.

I like to practise Sanchin after this class in front of the big mirrors, just concentrating on body wave, movement. Slowly slowly slowly.

Motivation lacking this week… doesn’t often hit me but…I’ll put it down to cold weather and i don’t know what else. Everything and nothing!

Saturday – lagoon walk, cold but beautiful. Immediate mood lift. Intuflow. Sanchin.

Monday  – no Ashihara, i’ve got to be fiscally responsible at the moment and …

Tuesday Teaching Night – first class was back up to 50. I don’t know, I keep abusing these people and beating them up and still they come back…we did some moving and striking (with 50 you need air traffic control). Then split the anklebiters off for karate games with Wayne and Ben (roped in as sempais) while I did striking/avoiding partner work with the rest. Finished with tag sparring. All happy.

2nd Class Got Sempai Janet to take the white belts for basics so I could play with my core group.

I’ve been dwelling a bit on this whole attributes issue so one theme was positional strategy (but gkr-ised, of course…). Partner work – Sota uke, gedan barai, kakie uke working either to the inside or the outside and what you can do from where you find yourself. Starting slow and formatted, working to hard and randomised.

Then the whole group for conditioning – the question was Why do we condition? Tried a working with the concept of taking a hit/kick and striking back immediately. Also with eyes closed. Then a hard (for them ) session of strength excercises to finish. All happy.

Except possibly three hapless newbies who weren’t told by their recruiter the second class is by invitation only and had a hard session. One was a seven year old girl, she hits well!

Rick please tell me if you don’t want me using ideas I get from your posts,  I will desist completely. I try not to borrow but its my only opportunity to play with some of this stuff.

A quiet week for training. Other stuff to sort out. Just some flow to music two or three nights and the lagoon walk Saturday.

Tuesday Teaching night – only 39 in the first class, lol. Basics, kata, tag sparring.

Second class - running, pushups and situps to warm up then slow full tension strikes, blocks for coloured grades. Basics with new white belts, focus on principles.  Then kata and sparring. Conditioning to finish.

Wednesday Night – Senior training. Whole night was an evolving set of combinations using sparring footwork – the step up-step forward type – reverse strikes, backfists, finishing with a high round kick. Then partner work with increasing intensity. Actually not too bad because at least we were moving. Lots of people had trouble with the footwork which is good, means they have to engage their brains and not slip into habitual patterning. I’d like this to become completely effortless so its going to need some practise. Its not close quarters stuff, very not-Uechi, but it is relatively fluid.

Ok so its dancing…

Wednesday night - Senior Training.

I got there to find Very Senior Instructor waiting to talk to me, had come to the dojo especially to do so. Found out later that my own instructor had felt very very badly about the whole debacle and had had strong words with him about it the following day, can’t have been easy for him. VSI is 4th Dan, as high as it gets in gkr without actually being god.

 So ended up spending most of the evening talking to VSI and not training. There was an exchange of views, neither of us lost too much blood. Even some philosophy, imagine that.

His take was that he had made a blanket criticism not actually aimed at me at all but at some other unspecified individual/s in the group, and that if I had a problem I should have come to him directly to discuss it.

My take was, well,  already wrote about that.

But he knows me a little better now.

Next post – the soap opera continues…

Interesting week. As in the Chinese proverb.

Weekend had major family commitments, all pleasant, minimal training done.

Monday was a holiday so no class at Ashihara, did Intuflow at home, pretty slack really.

Tuesday  -Teaching night- Kids and beginners – down to just 47, cold weather, natural attrition. It doesn’t matter how good their first class was, some people never come back, I don’t worry about it any more. Sensei had several unsolicited phone calls from new students saying how much they enjoyed their first class so thats good. We did basics as a group then split the kids off for some karate games with the sempais while I took the adults and got them to try to kick down the wall of the gym. Which they enjoyed. Also gave them the talk about new neural pathways. Which I enjoyed.

Senior Class – stances, striking in different directions (I call it “delivering energy to the four corners”!!!) to appease my conscience about gkr format. Then moved this into avoiding strikes, improving position and then absorbing and using the strike. Quote was from Gogen Yamaguchi about five principles of Goju Ryu, very politically correct.