A Dark Side Adventure

Friday morning – spur of the moment decision  – 8 hour road trip to Wellington for a gkr karate camp. Four of us girls in Janet’s car - glorious weather, awesome scenery, loud music, hilarious company.

Saturday – about 9 hours all up in three sessions with Sensei Gavin from Oz, but not especially hard. Evolving combinations and partner work mixed with information about teaching during the day sessions. More emphasis on principles, a very good thing. Evening session was self defence – some useful stuff but basically the usual unrealistic shtick. I had big issues with a lot of it – too long, too complex, too simple! too much talk, too much technique, not enough adjustment of method to suit short women! This is not Tony Blauer lol.

Quote of the night from the instructor  - ” My advice if you go to the ground is – don’t go to the ground.”  Aarrgh.  Swear words from Sue. Thanks very much for that mate.  

Sunday we had one long session of kata and kata bunkai with some sparring to finish. Enjoyable.

Interesting how much ”new emphasis” stuff overlapped with things I’ve been doing with my senior group over the last few months – Janet and I got to laugh quite a lot about that.

Good to catch up with old friends from around the country again, fun trip back, a very good weekend.

Monday Ashihara  -Stair-running warmup, usual pushups, situps, squats etc, also rolling, 30 mins. Some drills learning to fall – very needed. Then partner work with sabaki and some more specific self defence stuff. Liked the strangle-from-behind one as I see relationships with some gkr kata. Still finding the kicking dynamics very different – the low kicks are pushes/shin slices. Lot of learning and re-learning.

Tuesday Teaching Night -  First class worked moving and stances with basics, then took the adults quickly through some of  last nights self defence to review.

Second class  – strength warmup then worked Ricks 1st steps of Speed and Destruction of Structure – results see post. This will improve with practise and as we move through the progression.

Wednesday – trained with the consultants during the day as I had an evening event at Ben’s school. This was actually one of the better classes I’ve had with gkr. After quick basics we went into some deflect and take-down work not a million miles from what Marcus and Darren were doing on the latest clip. Well, ok, its gkr, but still…I love this stuff – it flows and it just works.

Then a hard conditioning session – open handed strikes on the partner’s stomach. Well well well  -  all that bagwork has been working. Er the to the results to my stomach are not exactly pretty but never mind! I had to pull my strikes to the partner in the end because she couldn’t take any more. Then focus-pad striking – as hard as possible. Still a long way to go but I can generate much, much better power than I could six months ago. Bloody good.

And that was what I wanted all along – strong.

Thursday – Intuflow to music, little yoga, kung-fu movie on tv.