Tuesday – watched part of a local Kempo class to see what it was like.
Teaching – concentrated on kumite, various formats. Kata to finish.
Wednesday night – gkr senior training – combos and partner work. Janet and I had fun as always. Lots of kata.
Thursday – worst kungfu movie I have ever seen, truly dire lol.
Friday – weights, deadlifts. Upped a little – 10x40kg then 10x45kg. Still more in the tank, but I’m taking it slow. Intuflow to music. Nice.
Had to work Saturday, only got in a lagoon walk with Ben but that was still nice.
Sunday – Sensei Anthonie’s class concentrated on hips and moving and turning in long stance. Very very technical. Some of it was interesting but theres still this massive assumption that precision of technique creates functionality.
Monday Ashihara really enjoyed this class. We did the usual tough warmup and then worked with four different responses to particular attacks- a bearhug, a strangle, a straight/hook strike combo, a round kick (nice evade, takedown and control with armlock on the ground). We first did each with a partner then played “stuck in the mud” with tagged people having to do the response to escape – a lot of running around and scrambling mayhem. Finally we split into two groups of seven with one person in the middle and practised the attacks randomly. Tended to become a free for all, huge fun!And I got to use a little of Marcus’s stuff on the straight/hook combo thing, that worked, yay.
Finished with kata.
Tuesday Teaching Night
This later Tuesday night class has been my small investigation into darkside stuff and its nearly come to an end. Its been interesting.
At the start of the year I set down a pretty idealistic mission statement of what I wanted the class to achieve.
I’m now going back over some of the stuff I’ve tried to cover and seeing how much, if anything, has been absorbed - what has been learned. These were the specific areas in which I wanted the group to improve in understanding and application – Motivation, Mobility, Mindset, Strength, Functional Spontaneity.
I’ve looked at striking power and options, close quarters fighting , range of weapons, distancing, positional strategy, absorbtion/redirection, emotional responses, conditioning. Limited, obviously, by my own inexperience and lack of understanding.
I always see the good, cant help myself. (That hasn’t always been the case). Got a couple more weeks to evaluate.
Wednesday GKR Senior Training.
Simple block/strike/kick drill, finished at “hard and strong”. Sensei told me I was on fire. Gosh, thought i would have felt that.
Then a quite physical blocking partner drill – with Janet – and some “self defence”. Janet and I just improvised. Dear me she is getting bolshie. She just finding fault with everything…lol. Kata to finish.
Thursday – silliest kungfu movie yet – “Marco Polo” – man that was bad/hilarious. I guess you have to be in the mood.
Friday – worked late so only time for some Intuflow.
Saturday – Weights.
Deadlifts – Just trying out what I can do, starting carefully. 30kg x 10, 40kg x 10. trying to keep good form. Not sure if the idea is to do more reps at a lower level or fewer at a higher level. This turns out to be a remarkably good allover workout, legs and backside specially.
Sunday – Dancing.
Worked on legs/kicking techniques mainly. Lots of excellent hip stretching and leg strength work. A little yoga to finish.
Monday Ashihara
Long warmup. 3mins each of pushups, situps, stepups,short sprinting, burpees, leg lifts, stepups with knee raise, lunges, stair running, plank, tricep lifts, squats.
Then dynamic leg stretching with partner, really really good.
Then kata, first as a group then working through each segment with partner in bunkai format. I wish they didn’t rip through this stuff so fast, but I learnt a lot. I gather my struggles are very typical.
Bad week. Other commitments (Bens final prizegiving, that was awesome), plus sick with flu. No training since Monday.
Its time to reassess.
Another crossroads.
Wednesday – gkr senior class. Mixed up kind of a thing – kata, combinations, kata, partner drill, kata.
Saturday – Sensei Anthonie’s black belt class. Concentrated on hip work, very interesting, isolating and practising hip rotations. Some questions coming on this.
Monday Ashihara – after warmup did a progressive rolling/breakfalling sequence that finally became a kind of rolling kata – forward roll/right side breakfall/leftside breakfall/baack breakfall/backwards roll/front breakfall/forward roll/cartwheel. Challenging, fun. Then one of their kihon katas. Six quite separate sections, each 3-4 moves. Went through each one fast ten times then drilled them in a group of four people, rotating through. Good basics – lots of sabaki, high and spinning kicks.
Tuesday – long warmup with kata strike and stance variations to appease the unseen gods of gkr and lots and lots of strength stuff.
Then a play with NLD. I spent a little time at the beginning just getting them to understand what slow motion really is, a hard concept for the youngsters. Next time we’ll do some zombie work before starting lol.
I found various difficulties – one was timing. They took a while to understand the “begin” had to come during the attack, not at the end. I also found that they fell too easily into repetitive patterns of attack, or they spent too long creeping around trying to be tricky, missing the point (s) completely. The responses were frequently ineffective but I dont mind that because each person has to learn what will work. Also the attacks and responses were typical of the style, so more distant and without much understanding of absorbtion, receiving. OMG I hear, how to ruin a perfectly good drill…but by the end they were doing better. Ben got it best because hes had a wee look at some of the video.
So it was a start. It will improve as they get familiar with the format and we’ll ramp it up a little notch next time.
Finished with kata.
Hard warmup 40 mins. Did circle-squats again – 14 of us with arms around shoulders, each counting ten squats. 14 people, 5×10 each. Then hopping on each leg for three minutes. Legs are jelly! Stretches.
Then striking/kicking drills progressively adding sophistication. Then the same with partner and focus pads. My kicking was ok, still struggling with the spinning ones. Just have to practise. Good class.
For various reasons I only trained Gkr last week, usual teaching and senior classes, nothing special.
I did Sunday class with Sensei Anthonie – focussed on kicks again - technical breakdown of the four Gkr fundamental kicks (mae-geri, mawashi-geri, yoko-geri, yoshiro-geri). It was interesting to contrast his techniques for close-in mae-geri with Rick’s from the NLD clips.
Oh but the highlight this week was a Friday Fight Night at Ashihara. Sensei is trying to raise money to buy a proper ring for the dojo so each month he’s going to have this event as a fundraiser. Lots of kids doing Ashihara sparring intermixed with some adult bouts. Actually very very good – even the kids hit hard. Each bout was three two-minute rounds with continuous action, not the stop and start stuff of the karate I’m used to. Some kickboxing, including a women’s bout, very entertaining, and a couple of really superb mma-style fights. Well worth the $5 entry and the $2 beer!