A Dark Side Adventure

Tuesday Teaching night – hard warmup by gkr standards. Had to do more squats because my legs were so sore from last night.

Then striking, kicking to focus pads, spear and receiving. A spell on kicks. A spell on getting up and running away. Light conditioning to finish.

Wednesday Senior class – Light kumite to warmup then a long series of team attacking/blocking drills. Aerobic but ineffective. Then up through all the katas. My kata was not good, felt depressed!

Ben is coming to this class now – he has decided he wants to be a sensei. He hugely enjoyed his time helping out in my first class and had some good success at the latest tournament.

How ironic that as I am about to leave completely, he is finally wanting to commit to it. Best I can hope is that continued exposure to Marcus and Darren’s material will get him thinking. Meantime I hope hes figured out just  how hes actually going to get to training if I’m not gonna be going…

Thursday – relax, glass of wine, silly king fu movie.

Monday Ashihara – usual hard 35-40 min warmup – multiple everythings with fast basics and stretching thrown into the mix. We have one lovely exercise where we all stand in a circle with our arms around each others shoulders and do group squats. Each person  has to count ten and there were 18 of us and we did it three times…kind of group bonding by shared pain.

Then a range of fast striking/kicking partner drills with focus pads. My kicking is still bad but getting a little stronger, my partner Allan very patient and generous.

I’m feeling more comfortable with the group and with the material. I’ve stuck it out long enough that I’m more accepted and so I’m able to learn more from everyone, its taken a while.

Gkr black belt class with senior Sensei Anthonie – workshopped kicks, mainly mae-geri/mawashi-geri, and mawashi-geri/yoko-geri combinations, together with some work on hangetsu-dachi. Lots of discussion.

Sensei Anthonie is a consummate technician, his comprehension of body mechanics for this type of kicking is superb. He kicks beautifully. Some interesting insights about analysing movements, listening to your body – but largely irrelevant to my current mindset. My kicking is bad,  flexibility poor,  motivation sadly lacking and my sucking-up-to-o- sensei just not up to standard.

Such completely different sessions in two days. unbelievable really.

Saturday IUPA Uechi

Its very good to be able to write that.

So we started with strikes to warm up – sinking, relaxing. Then moved into the spear and just using it really, very good.  Priorities for me being grounded, forward, low and  protected.

 Then morphed into more realistic scenarios with Marcus and Darren both attacking with boxing gloves and ramping up the level somewhat. Still safe and controlled, just less so. Little bit of rougher stuff, groundwork…man have i got a lot to learn. Excellent, educational, challenging… different levels of conditioning becoming very obvious.

I get myself tied in knots defining what the rules of the drill are, what the sensei wants me to do- doh! no rules idiot, do what works.  But i can feel layers peeling away…

Joseph is just thriving on this. The changes in that boy are remarkable and it is astonishing how quickly its happening. Ben also. Very special.

Sunday – Intuflow, playing with weights.

Monday Ashihara – warmup was basics then – 1, step-ups, situps, pushups, bagwork free striking -  10×10 each 2. starjumps, legraises, plank, bagwork freestriking -  10x 20seconds each 3. squats, elbow situps, pushups, bagwork kicking 6 x 20 seconds. Then stretching.

Then kicking drills. Spinning, jumping, axe-kicks all kinds of stuff. This is where Ashihara and I part company in a serious way.

Finished with some Yi Chuan standing meditation which I found extremely interesting.

Tuesday – teaching night. Warmup with strikes to focus pads. Revised some of Saturday’s stuff. The three boys each took a segment – mainly spear leading to takedown stuff. Then situps/pushups/legraises/plank 5×10 each.

Finished with tournament style sparring practise because five of the group are entering Saturdays NZ GKR nationals.

Wednesday – GKR senior class – kata all night starting from the beginning.

Thursday – Rest night and silly kung-fu movie. This was a really good one – “Shaolin Princes” –  Brilliant!

Striking to pads to start. Singles working on the mechanics, trying to shorten/intensify the action, sink.  Then doubles trying to eliminate the familiar old one-two patterning.

 Moved onto the spear and developed from that into preemptive actions and moving to create openings, flowing from bad position to good. I struggle to bring all the elements together – if I concentrate on sink and guard I forget centre or forward pressure or footwork or something, but its just practise and familiarity and relaxing and listening to your body. Hah and i think too much!

Then then kotikitae as light conditioning. Then push-hands. Then elbows – striking to the pads. Awesome.

Lots of demonstration/ discussion, two hours went really fast.

Tuesday Night – Teaching.

Small group. Worked strength/fitness/stretching/ strikes to focus pads to warm up for about 25 minutes. Then kata – all the way up through the whole progression of nine from Taigyoku shodan to Hangetsu. Janet workshopped Seifa with one of the younger lads.

Then working through some of the progressions from the spear and into moving/reacting. I learn things for myself  from trying to explain and watching how the guys handle this material. Some of their issues reflect my own.

Small discussion about anger and its uses - Marcus has me thinking again lol.

Wednesday – gkr senior class, Ben came with me. Kata all night concentrating on Sepai. Enjoyable.

Thursday – Intuflow about 20 minutes.

Friday - Sumo training lol

Ashihara

Warmup about 35 minutes of hard basics and combinations mixed with pushups, situps, leg raises, squats, wheelbarrow partner up and down the stairs, round the dojo.  Then stretches.

Then a three-person stamina/strength drill  – one person takes off their belt and uses it to drag a second person hanging on behind while punching forward into a striking pad held by the third. Have to simultaneously pull against the resistance and thrust forward with the strikes. Two rounds of three and five minutes per person then repeat with front kicks. This was physically one of the most intense things I’ve done -   strength totally sapped after each round.

Then sparring. I haven’t done a lot of sparring at Ashihara and I struggle with the dynamics, the constant shin and thigh kicks, the spinning sabaki takedowns, the inability to use my normal weapons and tactics. Learning to shin-block but my legs are still very sore. The women weren’t a problem but the last round guy in particular seriously stressed me.

Which was interesting in itself. Exhausted, feeling threatened, repeatedly hurt by the kicks, had to keep going.  I found that I couldn’t breathe and I had to consciously control the shock/panic.

Educational, important.  Does it feel nice – no. Do I need to know how that feels – yes. Do I need to do it again and again. Yes.

ahh long week…but its ok

Quite a lot of training  – the usual Wednesday night gkr, nothing special, Friday extra kata work with Sensei Michael-James.

And Saturday Uechiiii- yay

Janets garage dojo. Ben trained this week , also Lynne, another friend from gkr who has a kickboxing background. Spear, striking, elbow work, putting them together. Learnt a lot, as always. …wasn’t happy with my elbow work although it did improve. Lots of discussion about violence, reality etc.

 Lynne asked about  creating distance – she is an awesome kicking queen – Marcus’s demonstration fairly showed how little of an issue this is. Doubt if she’s ready to accept it though.

Ben really liked it, I knew he would because it makes sense! He strikes well, so does Janet. Haha she gets more corrupted each time we train lol.

Much later, at home, free flow Intuflow/moving to music, working on everything but especially elbows…much better.

Current Intuflow playlist – this is a good short workout:-

From the Beginning – Emerson Lake and Palmer 4.15m, Lucky Man  – The Verve 4.52 m, 29 Palms – Robert Plant 4.51 m, Never Met  a Girl Like you Before – Iggy pop 3.55m, Mercy – Duffy (lol) 3.39m, Classical Gas – Eric Clapton 5.13m, Rat in my Kitchen – UB40 3.08, Gone gone Gone – Robert Plant and Alison Krauss 3.33m.

Warm down with Summer Wine – Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazelwood 4.16m

Just over 35 mins of aerobic, flowing fun.

Tuesday Teaching Night

Last time to take this class, its been seven years I think. My good friends Cole and Chris are going to take it over, they trained with the group to ease everyone in a bit. Smallish class only 30 or so because of the school holidays.

Warmup,  then split the class into groups because there were so many helpers – Chris and Cole did mainly kata with the adults  (gave them all a chance to get to know each other), Ben and Wayne took the higher grade kids through a range of fun stuff and  I took the four white belts. Good class.

2nd Class  – Still holding onto this one  just for now.

Very hard warmup. Strength and fitness then some stamina stuff.

Then tried out the start of Ricks Oh Crap-Okay progression. I was very pleased with this. It all makes make sense – everyone understands the why, and it ties into all the stuff I’ve been doing with Marcus. Congruity, nice. There were two new yellow belts I’ve invited to the class, father and son – they guys basically did just as well as the more experienced ones. We’ll go further with it next week.

Sparring to finish to officially break in the newbies mitts and pads and a team kata demo from three of the younger lads – Seifa.

Quote was from something I got off the net a while back, no idea of the source now:

“Anger is the child of frustration and is the last resort of the ignorant. The best fighter is not angry”.