I've not posted much lately and there's a good reason for that, I've not trained much lately. The crazy summer season officially started last weekend when Andrew played his first soccer tournament of the season and it will not stop, or at least slow down for the next 7 weeks.
Andrew is entering his second season as part of our city's development/competitive U9 soccer squad and as such, he plays a game per week, usually on Mondays, and he has practices on Wednesdays and also possibly on Saturday morning for many weeks this Summer. If you've followed my postings a little, the adult classes for my level are on Mondays, Wednesdays and Saturdays. Oops...
Also worth noting is that we have a second little one, whom I don't think I have introduced yet. Readers, please meet Matthew, aka "the terror" or simply Matty. :) He's now 28 months old and at the age where it's not always easy to bring him to practices and games, mostly because they usually end past his bedtime, at the time when he gets real cranky. This means one of us stays home with him and the other is off to one of Andrew's sport events.
Yeah, I said "one of" because Andrew's a multisport kiddo. Sure, as you now know, he's into karate, but that'll slow down a little during Summer. We'd been doing three times a week with him for a couple of months, instead of his usual two a week schedule in order to be able to do once a week once Summer settles in. This once a week should be on Friday evenings.
Then, you might ask, why doesn't he go to karate on Tuesdays or Thursdays, well that's because he's more than two-sports multisport, he's three-sports multisport, at least for this Summer. They are starting a football league for 3rd to 6th grade and when Andrew heard that some of his school buddies were signing up, he got all excited and asked us if he could do it. There's one rule in our house. You can do just about as many sport activities as you want, we will drive you to it, will attend your events, will cheer you on, as long as you commit to it and stick to it for the duration of the commitment. Andrew knows this rule and he agreed to it. Football season will go for 7 weeks, starting next week. Not a very long season, but still something to deal with. The nice thing about the football people is that they've set it up so that two of the four 3rd/4th grade teams practice on Monday/Wednesday and the other two on Tuesday/Thursday and they have allowed people to make requests regarding which nights they would want to have. Because of that, and the fact that some soccer teammates of Andrew will also be playing football, we were able to convince his soccer coach to do practices on Wednesdays as I said before.
And with this request, I was able to make it so that football and soccer will be going all week long without one interfering on the other, but oh the fun... Think about this kind of schedule, in which I'm simply the driver I must say ;):
Monday, soccer game
Tuesday, football practice
Wednesday, soccer practice
Thursday, football practice
Friday, karate
Not to forget the aforementionned soccer practices on Saturday morning and oh, I almost forgot, football games on Saturday afternoon and sometimes in the morning, our only conflict. I signed up with google calendar just so I have some sort of an idea what we will be doing on what night in the week...
*sigh*
So,what's the link with the blog? Well, this jam packed schedule is forcing me to rethink my whole karate schedule for the Summer. The way I see it, the only way I'll be able to get two hours of class per week will be by doubling up on Saturday morning, from 10 to 11 then 11:15 to 12:15. Even though the first hour is for intermediate level student, our instructor allows advanced student to tag along. I don't think this will be as effective as having two hours separately in the week, but this will have to do for now. Saturday mornings are not so bad, family-wis, since my wife will be able to drive Andrew to and from soccer/football practices/games, either bringing along Matty or asking her mother to come watch him, which she likes anyway but can't do during the week since she works the evening shift.
Add to that, I'm feeling as if in a slump. Karate's been pretty intense since last December, when I was getting ready to pass my 3rd kyu, and with both of us competing, it was pretty usual for me to train or have class up to 6 hours per week. To me, that was intense, even though I've learned that for some others (hi Mat ;)) it could be some casual training. Because of that slump, I almost don't feel like going on Saturday. Don't worry, I will go, and I'm sure I'll enjoy it once there, but I know I need to slow down during the week, which I will do...
Also, some weird muscular pain in my right calf was telling me to calm down a bit. More like a stiffness than anything else, but I wanted to see if it would go away by taking it easy on the horse stance. I think I must be compensating for a weak right knee in some way because after not doing the horse stance in a week, the stiffness is about all gone. I'll go back to the working on the stance shortly.
Still, learning martial arts remains a journey, not a short term destination...
FM
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6 comments:
What a busy schedule! It is nice to see how you support your son's activities.
I would guess that you would need to do more home training on your own for the next 7 weeks as your son participates in football.
Here's a couple of ideas;
a) What time do you wake up for work? Would you be able to wake up an hour earlier to do some basics, kata, sparring combinations, or conditioning exercises?
b) What time does your son finish his soccer/football practice? is there time afterwards to put in a half hour of training before you settle for sleep each day?
c) How about during your son's practice? Is there a place/space nearby that you could do some karate practice as your son does his thing? Even a dojo/ school gym/empty parking lot / grassy field where you could do your kata?
I'd encourage you to think in littler bites than a full 2 hour class.. catch 15 minutes of kicking practice here, and 20 minutes of kata practice there.. Heck, pull out a skipping rope and do that for awhile to increase your cardio vascular. Whatever works for you!
Here's wishing you the best!
thanks for your comments Mireille, although honestly, you shouldn't be the one telling me I'm busy, it really should be the other way around ;)
let's see...
a) my alarm buzzes at 5:15, even though I snooze it twice before going to take a shower at 6:35 or about. After shower is my alone time to eat breakfast and get my lunch ready for the day and then I wake the boys up at 6:30 or so and we leave for daycare/school/work at 7:05. I don't see myself setting my alarm at 4:15 in the morning, or I don't see my wife allowing me to do so :D
b) his practices end at a reasonable hour, usually going from 6:00 or 6:15 to 7:30 or about. Yeah, there's usually plenty of time to log in some training time after that but as I said, I don't always feel like training these days. Maybe in a few weeks I'll start training while he takes his Friday night karate night class, as I used to do for the last couple of months or so.
c) thing is, I like watching him practice and I get the feeling he appreciates that I spend the time watching him. When the weather will be nicer, say mid-june or so, I'll probably arrange with my wife so that I drop him to his Wednesday soccer practice, stay there until 6:50 then leave for a karate class and have her pick him up with Matty whom I'm sure will be happy to run freely on the grassy soccer field ;)
As for the 2 hours of class on Saturday, it's exactly how I see it. Having the class with the same instructor also helps in that he knows what I worked on in the first hour so he can set me up with a training partnet who needs to work on something else on the second hour. It's more the physical workout which is a bit more demanding, but I'll post more about this soon...
Later, Steve.
Maybe you injured your calf in sparring (a back or hook kick getting blocked with an elbow would do it). Or you could be overdoing it with this horse stance (shiko dachi) regimen of yours. Some practitioners have a tendency of going too wide with their stances, especially shiko. Ideally, from a basic fighting stance, just by rotating either on the balls of your feet or heels, you should be able to transition into any stance. Most stances should be shoulder width, and that includes shiko dachi. Above all, listen to your body and rest your injury.
thanks for your comments John, I doubt it's from sparring, as I really don't remember getting hit in the calf.
After checking some stuff, it's more kiba dachi than shiko dachi that I work on as it's how they ask it from us on test and on most of our self-defense techniques. Both of these are similar though and they are wide stance, almost double shoulder width and the pictures on this site (http://xrl.us/gkrstances) are about how the horse stance was shown to me. In fact, what you say about rotating on the balls of the feet applies quite well to moving from the horse stance to the forward stance for example. Obvisouly, it's not the same when going to a cat stance, which a purposely a shorter stance.
Anyway, I also think it was more overdoing the training a bit that caused it because after my two hour class of yesterday, I feel fine, well, my calves feel fine. As for other part of my body, well, let's say they're sore, but that was expected ;)
Later, Steve.
Long term destination indeed. :)
Talk about a busy schedule! Since you don't have much time for going to the dojo, personnal practice is gonna be important for your karate. But, it's also summer. :) Time for a karate off-time?
I'll keep practicing, I'm already building myself a mini-dojo space (I know I'm a bit crazy) in my basement. And I'm gonna train my gf with me. Run her through the basics. Which brings my point. The basics are the most advanced techniques. Train on those this summer.
Crazy schedule! Hope you make it through with all limbs intact. Do take care of that injury. I'm hurt right now and my training schedule has dropped a lot. 2 or 3 times a week. :) I'm doing the least I can. Going to the two classes and training (read:doing kata work hyper-slowly) once a week.
You'll get your mojo back. Miss it for some time. You'll see. You'll be doing stances or punches in the air for no reason :)
Have fun!
Mat,
yeah, as I said, Summer season and taking some time off is probably what it is. I don't want to stop going to class, not with seeing four of my fellow adult students getting ready to test for their black belts in a couple of weeks, and thinking, "wow, that could be me, sooner than I think".
I'll probably take time off the home, or "off the class", training and will simply go to class for at least a little while but as you say, I know that at one point, I'll simply feel like doing a kata in the grass in our backyard. Only yesterday, I pulled out my bo and worked it a bit, not much, just a bit. Still felt good :)
You on the other hand should really let your injury heal properly. You wouldn't want that rib to haunt you for a couple months more than what is required ;)
I'll be following your mini-dojo renos with interest. Our basement isn't finished and while I don't plan on adding a dojo to it, I want to decorate it with a karate styling to it, possibly kanji, Bruce Lee posters and such. My wife has even told me it was a good idea. It'll be my playroom anyway, where the computer/TV will be, right next to the woodstove. :) One thing I really want to get is two belt holders, one for me and one for my son, so we can see and show how we've evolved from the time we were both white belts :)
Later, Steve.
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