A Dark Side Adventure

Monday Ashihara

Quick warmup and kihon to start. The kihon strikes are done with much more body movement than I’m used to, lots of shoulder, and include downward and backward elbows. Blocks quite circular, using some footwork. So this is all good for me, helping retrain the static habits.

Then evolving partner work based on kicks. This was really good. Light leg and body conditioning with shin kicks. Some blocking but also avoiding and moving round behind, sabaki, taking out the base and takedowns. Lots of work with voids and shearing. And hyperflexion of the head/jaw. I really really enjoyed this. Slowly slowly starting to piece together the puzzle bits. Great class.

Monday – Ashihara. Basic strikes and blocks. Then a fitness/strength exercise involving stair running, pushups, situps and squats. Then their Kata Kihon San and extended bunkai of the kata. Finished with some sparring, still coming to grips with this. At least my guard was better. Hard work, good class.

Tuesday- Teaching Night

1st Class – big group again, back to 38. Basics for whites and newbies with lots of whacking them with the noodles. Dont we all love it. Combos and openhanded strike practise for coloureds. Sparring to finish.

2nd Class – Had a sort of of elbows theme running. Started with some mixed elbow and straight striking combos, all directions. Then segued into slightly ashihara-like side step, control ,elbow entry stuff. Then added a lock. Then added a knee kick. Then did a reaction drill – drop and spinning elbow strike. Harder than usual strength drills, pushups, situps, leg raises,  stretches.  Finished with kotikitae. 

Quote was something I found in Rory Miller’s book whaich boils down to - your strongest shot at his weakest point when he’s least ready.

Wednesday – gkr Senior class. Warmup with pushups, situps. A long  evolving partner drill of strikes, counters and kicks. Could have been good but not alive enough. Kata to finish – Hangetsu with the other four Shodan-ho’s. The kata is feeling good.

Not a hard class at all but still quite shattered.

Thursday – The Twelve Tigers of Kwangtung. lol

Friday – got waylaid, happens sometimes.

Saturday – work and stuff to do so just the lagoon walk with Ben – wet and windy and wild.

Sunday – had a friend, Tracey, over to train – the Dark Side Circuit. Threw pretty much the the whole thing at her:

Started with weights  20kg 10 x 5 reps, then squats with the 20 kg weight held low 10 x 5 reps. Then the bag – slaps x 30, palm heels, inside and outside shuto and combos.  Elbow flows on the focus mitt. Kotikitae. Push hands. Inside for Intuflow to music finishing with spinal rocks and leg swoops. Clubbells. Then a little kata.

Ended up showing her some subversive Shotokai bassai-dai someone once sent me, and a really outrageous Uechi-ryu Seisan.

She saw some of the connections! Eureka. I might just have found a meat-puppet!

Tuesday Teaching Night

1st Class – warmup game of mitts/tag followed by multiple strikes and kicks just aimed at building stamina and strength. Then split into groups for kata. I took the littlies for kata and tag sparring. What a zoo!

2nd Class – sparring to warmup,then a hard 30mins of strength and stretching. Then kata workshopping, concentrating on strength – kata you wouldn’t want to stand in front of –  then everyone demonstrating to the group. Wanted to finish with the explosive medecine ball thing but it actually dents the wooden floor so we  dented each other instead.

Quote was  “In the midst of movement and chaos, keep stillness inside of you”,  Deepak Chopra. Feels appropriate at the moment.

Wednesday night – GKR Senior class – sparring to start. Just frustrating really. Then kata workshopping. Also frustrating, but mainly with myself.

Thursday Night – Silly kung-fu movie – “Drunken Monkey”, one of my favourites.

Ashihara

Long 35 minutes or so warmup of intensive mixed devilry  – rounds of assorted pushups, situps, leg raises, boxing combos, etc etc then about 10 minutes major stretching. I cope pretty well with this stuff although i need to increase the sophistication of some of it. 

Then focus pad work with partner, four fast basic drills. Basic but i struggle, my partner very patient. Can’t slow it down, just have to do it. Sensei keeps coming to correct/improve the movement and i’m just trying to remember the sequence. Still i’ve got to be better than when I started, just a little.

Then free sparring, learning to keep my hands up and shinblock. It was fun. Finished with “Kihon Kata” which is exactly what it sounds like. Again the fast pace is a struggle

Tuesday teaching night – really small 1st class because of school holidays so split everyone into groups. Kata, basics (ugh), open-handed techniques, some self defence stuff for the smallest kids. Finished with the “drag them out of the circle” exercise - hard to get the kids to really really fight – theyre so totally conditioned. So we’ll need to keep working on it.

2nd class – huge long strength, fitness and stretching warmup because I was just in the mood. Then striking/avoiding drills increasing in intensity. Good conditioning for arms, some people sore. Moved into kumite. I took a huge, accidental shoken to the bicep (the only shokens in gkr are accidental). Pain is just weakness etc…Then some flowing Bassai-dai, as an experiment. Very non-gkr. Finished with kotikitae, more conditioning, just light. Everyone suitably battered, including me.

Wednesday Night – Gkr Senior training. Kata in pairs one critiquing the other, moving up through the sequence. My partner was a lower grade and it was a good revision of earlier katas. She was focussed on technique, I was just experimenting with timing and grouping really. Interesting, quite useful.

 Then some kumite. I’ve had enough of the points-scoring ethos, just can’t cope with it any more, so not doing very well on their terms. One girl very shocked that i kept hitting her…in tournaments you stop after you’ve scored a hit.  And I’m not a specialist in single reverse stomach punches. Trouble is I can’t really practise the way I want to.

So I’m caught between one thing and another, but thats okay. Theres only one direction this is headed.

Okay so the weekend was a writeoff  – hard work that sumo training…

Monday night – Ashihara. Long half hour warmup. Multiple lunges, three sorts of pushups, leg raises, hopping, squats, back arches, something called “navy seals”, lots of other evil things, followed by static stretching, yoga and dynamic high leg raises.  Loved it. My flexibility has really improved and my fitness is a bit better too. Arms letting me down so I’ll really have to get to work with the weight bench.

Then sabaki takedowns of various sorts. This I need to work at – getting the footwork right, getting the grip correctly, staying low and weighted, keeping the elbows close to the body, spiralling. I’m still too upright and far away. But it was great fun. I really liked one where you step around a kick into a takedown - it was the sanchin step. And I was able to give them a new technical term they hadn’t hear of before – meat puppet. lol.

Finished with a little kata, very basic combos really, like the kumites all joined up. Felt so good after training I came home and did some Intuflow.

Wednesday night  -gkr senior training – kata all night. Good comments, felt good.

Thursday night – physio for the last time with Malcolm and his car seat belt. Has been awesome. I am definitely stronger for his work.

Tonight its “The Executioners of Shaolin”. Glass of wine.

Tuesday Teaching Night

Ist class – Janet and her son Matt turned up early so I had extra help – split the huge group into four. The others concentrated on kata with adults and higher grades in vaious groups. I took the white belt kids for focus pad striking and kicking practise. Its like turning on a switch – when these kids have something to hit they put eveything into it.

2nd Class – Hard warmup with striking and kicking to Janets heavy muay thai bag, focus pads striking, medecine ball situps, the plank – 3 x 30 of each. Some yoga, downwards dog variations and leg swoops. Finished the warmup with Inch Worm across the dojo. That is one mean as little exercise!

Then worked on stances all night – moving and transitioning, various combinations of the gkr essentials. Finished with a little dark side Kotikitae. Now this was interesting. Janet, Matt and Ben have done it before at Marcus’s seminar but it was completely new to the others. They loved it – a brain challenge. I did a little heavy version with Janet to show another side of it.

Ben finished with handstand pushups so everyone had a little play…

A good night!