Still alive...

...and kicking :)

My life outside the dojo has just been really busy, as you probably know, and the life inside the dojo about as uneventful as the outside one is busy, so there wasn't much to report.

We worked on basics Saturday of last week, mostly self-defense techniques, K.C. and a little bit of kata work so not much new to talk about. I did get to learn all the 12 self-defense techniques in the 3rd group of techniques, the most advanced group. Will now have to work on them with attacks coming from either side.

The toughest part of that Saturday was going to see Andrew's football game which was played in a windy/rainy/sucky kind of weather. It was cold, cold, cold. It was Andrew's first football game ever and he said he had lots of fun, despite the weather.

Other than the very sunny Monday evening, the week was a rough one with very bad weather and rain on Tuesday and Thursday and some strong winds (yet thankfully no rain) on Wednesday. Rough in the sense that Andrew's got soccer games or soccer/football practices from Monday through Thursday and I attend to every one of his practice and games. Bad weather combined with some coworkers already carrying germs means yours truly caught a cold. Must have started on Wednesday but it really kicked in on Thursday and got worst through the weekend.

Anyway, fast forward to Saturday morning, another rainy/windy/cold/crappy weather kind of a day. I tell ya, I didn't look forward to sweat for 2 hours only to go in the pouring rain and the godawful wind for another 90 minutes. They must have heard me since the phone rang at about 9:15, just as I was contemplating skipping karate class in order to save myself for the afternoon in the rain. It was one Andrew's football coach calling to tell him that all games for the day had been cancelled. I tell ya, the weather was bad because one of the first thing they told us in the first preseason meeting was that it would play no matter was, unless there was lightning.

I went from "I don't feel like going" to "oh I'll go for an hour" to "oh what the heck, I'll do the full two hours" and I'm sure glad I went. It was one of those morning where you don't feel like going but once there, you get into it and it goes well and you forget that the weather is crap, that you're busy as heck and all that. We worked on self defense techniques again and I'm happy that I now know all them 12 last techniques and they are coming out better and better from one week to another. We also worked on self-defense techniques against attacks with a stick (we call it a club). We have 15 of those and you need to know them when you test for your 3rd kyu, so obviously I know them, but it had been a little while since I'd worked on them with a training partner and it felt good to work on them a bit Saturday. We finished that first hour by working on something quite special, techniques against a knife attack. These are not required even to test for your black belt, they are usually practiced by black belts, although as you see, they sometimes will have the higher underbelts practice them. It was pretty neat. Against a knife, you kind of have to go on the attack sometimes, for example, block the arm at the elbow while it's still going down on a downard stab kind of motion. What I mean is that if you let the blow come on a regular hook punch, you may block it just fine and avoid a strike to the face, but against a knife, if you wait, the blade might still cut you, and cut you bad.

The second hour consisted of some kata work, then 45 minutes of work on sushi no kon sho, the traditional bo kata that is required to test for the black belt. As you know, Andrew and I have been taking bo classes, but they are open style bo classes. There are some fundamental differences between traditional bo strikes and open style bo strikes. I had worked on sushi no kon sho a little in the past but most of the time it was while the creative bo classes were still going on so it was tougher for me to concentrate on one style or another. This time around, I've kinda stopped training with my bo for the Summer, even though I'll certainly take it outside once the weather permits it, so it was easier for me to really set my mind to sushi and try to learn it. 45 minutes non stop on one thing is a good period of time and our instructor taught it to three of us in little increment, so much so that I'd say we got about 2/3 or the kata almost memorized. Notice I said memorized, it's nowhere near a perfect execution, but I'm happy with that, especially that our instructor said we'd get back to it regularly over the Summer session.

FM