a different kind of sparring, sorta...

Our regular instructor wasn't there tonight so we were in for some change. Sometimes being instructed by somebody different isn't all bad. He first took us through a warmup that included a nice sequence of 200 punches in the horse stance, in groups of 50, that was quite the nice start :p We then went to do all of our blocking forms. These are smallish katas that include only blocks. The 1st blocking form is usually the first form you learn in our style, followed with the 2nd and the 3rd blocking form. There are are 4th and a 5th blocking form but they are reserved for black belts and they include some strikes with the blocks. We then went to do some of our basic forms and then were left to work on our most recent kata on our own for 10 minutes. I reworked my Cat Two and was even happy that my new found fluidity with it, developped over the last week, was helpful to a fellow student who knew I had presented it at the Open and simply asked me to do it so she could watch my timing with it. She is suffering from the same thing I had trouble with only last week as she'S concentrating so much on the movements and strikes that she's doing the form so slowly. I repeated to her a couple of pointers that had been given to me and that helped me a lot figuring out what I was supposed to be doing at some key point at the start of the form. I like trying to understand what is going on when I do a kata. Sometimes I wish we'd do more bunkai.

Anyway, the real interesting part came next. Our instructor told us to go get a bo from the rack. I thought we'd work on the first traditional bo kata that we have to learn, called "sushi no kon sho", but nope, he told us we'd learn a couple of blocking forms. That was quite cool with me, since we don't often practice with the bo in our regular classes. All the bo I've learned is during the competition class I usually take once a week, but it's of the open (or creative) type and I'll be the first to admit that it doesn't always have the real feel of self defense. Sometimes it's got more flash than purpose (although I also like it that way ;) ). Anyway, we did the forms, something like 8 blocks (up, down, left, right, to a 45 degree up strike from left, same from right, 45 degree from left but to the knee, same to the right). Then came the shocker, to me at least. Our instructor told us to go two by two and try it. WOAH! We started slow and picked up a tiny bit of speed as we went, but not much. Still, hearing the wood of the bos smack in the dojo had a very powerful effect on me, I LOVED IT! Seriously, it was great. We then went on to work on a couple of self defense techniques, again using the bo. And again, it was just great. Sparring might be a strong word for what we did, but still, we were not simply using the bo in a form, striking a virtual opponent, we were swinging the thing against a real fleshed out human.

I don't know what it'll take for me to have more of a chance to practice this type of thing, but you can be sure that I'll start researching it more and more and I'll keep my eyes and ears well open in case a class of that type opens up at one point...

FM