A Dark Side Adventure

Tuesday Teaching Night

1st class – Gave the whites and kids to my sempais and concentrated on quite simple moving/striking combinations with the higher grades and adults. Also moving in stances and just thinking about how they were moving. Then swapped over and took the whites and kids through Taigyoku Shodan while the other group did Seifa.

2nd Class – mitts game to warmup then extended leg workuout plus medecine ball situps. Broke out the new focus pads the boys gave me for my birthday (was i  delighted with those!) for some combos. Then a little time on striking, feeling what makes a strike harder and stronger and back to the pads again to test striking and play with palm heels. Workshopped  Seifa  – thinking about movement and harmonies – and finished with a little conditioning.

Feeling a little conditioned myself after last night…

Ashihara

Quick warmup then 40-45 mins of strength and fitness training. Four groups of five people each doing one exercise for 10 x10 reps or sometimes 30 seconds and alternating through each station. See if I can remember them all:

1. squats/pushups/situps/freestyle striking on the big bags

2. 3xstriking-blocking combos/freestyle on the bag

3.3x more striking-blocking-kicking combos/freestyle on the bag

4. 2x block-kick combos/star-jump/sidekick combo/freestyle on the bag

5. 3kg hand weight strikes/3kg hand weight head blocks/10kg weight bar on the shoulders with squat-kicks/freestyle  on the bag

6. 3kg handweight elbow strikes/3kg hand weight gedan blocks/10kg weight bar squat-kicks/freestyle on the bag

7. 3kg freestyle strikes/3kg handweight strike-kick combo/10kg squat kicks/freestyle on the bag.

There could have been more actually. Couldn’t lift the bar on or off my shoulders by the finish and my hands are skinned and bruised.

Then 10 minutes or so stretching.

Then a series of 8 or 10 drills where you move down the line practising against each person and take your place at the end. Started with simple block/move to the blindspot/strike combo, progressed through kicks and into takedowns. Very nice.

Brilliant class. Possibly the hardest I’ve ever done. Great spirit in the group, kept everyone working and pushing. I am going to be sooo sore….but man that was good!

Intuflow and Kung-fu movie – lol! This one was “Shaolin Temple” with Jet Li, probably a little more recent than some I’ve seen. Terribly funny or possibly funnily terrible. A good night in.

Senior Training gkr

Hangetsu to start with senior students critiquing. Very valuable if you want your hangetsu to look kosher, could have spent the whole night on this. Didn’t get enough time to imprint the information/feedback I was given. But thinking about that has taught me something about the way we learn kata and how we gradually make changes to what we do, the relationship between brain and action.

Then an evolving drill involving right hand sota-uke and left hand gedan barai  – a possibly tangled combination – then round kick counter. It was an odd drill that seemed all wrong to start with because it was unconventional but it improved with practise. I like things that challenge habitual actions. Couldn’t see the point of a stomach level round kick, although it flowed easily, so worked in a sanchin step and take down, much better.

Teaching Night

1st class back up to 40. New people keep coming, dammit, their friends are telling them about it…so very basic. Learning to hit and be hit. Learning to kick through. Then I took the white belts for kata so the coloureds could do open-handed work with Ben and Wayne. A stance game to finish.

Do you want fries with that?

2nd Class – a freezing night on a cold wooden floor in a draughty school gymnasium – so a hard warmup with strength and intuflow to start. Then a partner drill stepping into and deflecting  a kicking attack. Then tournament style kata and kumite for the rest of the night because four of the group are entered in this weekends event. Finished with conditioning.

Quote was from me, picked it up from something I read in Rory Miller I think – kick like youre knocking a hole through a wall. (Should follow my own advice).