A bo, a sandwich and some Gatorade...

Today marked the start of our bo classes on Saturdays. With an 11:15 traditional class for both Andrew and I, in separate rooms, and a new time of 1:15 pm for the bo class, this meant we had to bring our lunch, as we only had an hour in between the two classes. That bo class used to be at 2:15 and we had time to get back home, eat something without being on a timer and come back to the school for the bo class, but now, since it takes about 15 minutes to go back and forth from the school, I thought we were better off with a sandwich.

We made the best of it and sat down in the lounge they have at the school. It's a neat little room they have set in between the women's and men's dressing rooms where there's a big screen TV hooked up to a DVD player. Playing today was Lilo and Stitch 2, a cute movie I'd not seen yet. I also used some of that one hour to do my three pinan kata very slowly, paying good attention to my every moves...

As I said, the day started off with a traditional class. Looking back at it, one could say I didn't get much done, but I was very happy with the class. We started out with our usual warmup/cardio session that included much abs work which I know I need. That was painful but in a good way, if that makes any sense. We then did our three blocking forms, well three for anybody under balck belt, with the third a few more times while the black belts did the fourth and fifth blocking forms. As they names implies, the blocking forms are just forms of blocks, no strikes. These are the first forms we learn, before we go on to the pinan series. We then all did our highest kata once. For me, that was Cat two.

From there, four of us went to work on Sushi No Kon Sho, the traditional bo kata that is needed to test for the black belt. We had done it from beginning to end last week but none of us was able to make it to the end today. Our instructor guided us through it and we worked on that for the rest of the class. I'm quite happy about how it went today because once our instructor showed us the end, I was able to do it a few times by myself. It's not a pretty rendition, but I can make it to the end and for now, that's an accomplishment.

Then came lunch with Andrew and while it wasn't much, to sit with him, watch TV while we ate a sandwich and drank some very blue Gatorade, I couldn't help but be happy. I mean, that was simply cool. Sometimes I didn't even watch the TV screen, I just watched him. I love my sons. :)

Then came the bo class. I think I've explained before, but this is an open style kind of bo class, where we practice stuff that's usually more suited to compete. We learned a kata designed by our instructor last Fall so technically, judges don't what we really intend to do. Traditional and open styles of weapons usually compete in the same competitions, one against another. Even different weapons compete against one another. I'm the only adult taking this class and in today's class, there was me and four other kids, including Andrew. At the start of the clas, our instructor each gave us the choice of either making up a new kata with him, as a class, or each work to improve and change our existing kata. I let Andrew decide for the two of us. I liked that we have a kata, that I feel good about it, that he looks to be at ease with it, but would have been okay with learning a new one made from scratch. Knowing that Andrew isn't a big "trier" of new stuff, I almost knew beforehand how he would go, and he asked to keep on working on his kata and improve it as we go. By "improve it" or "change it", I literally mean that. We started practicing that bo together last September. By December, we sort of knew our kata. We really learned it in January and entered our first competition in February. After that, Andrew started taking private bo classes and that's when our instructor started telling us about little things we could do differently and from the first competition to the second, we had added a little extra strike or two, then before the third, another one, and at the Quebec Open, we had a slightly different kata from the one we started with in January. That's what we will do this time again, maybe make the kata longer, with a few more strikes here or there.

About today's class, after we'd done our kata once in front of him, our instructor told us what he wanted us to work on this Fall. We know the kata, well today was rough but we'd not done it in a couple months, so this will come back to us, but he wants us to work on the precision of it all. Our stances for one, he wants me to correct how I'm often kind of leaning forward when I do my strikes. I agree with him and I know this is something I need to work on in traditional stuff, when doing some punches in some kata. He also wants us to work on hand placement on the bo. See when doing rapid strikes, your hands should be place both and one third of the bo. When you do a basic figure 8, your hands go to the middle. We have some figure 8 in our kata, but they are often followed by strikes, which means I need to bring my hands back to third-third-third. We spent most of the class working on that today. This will require some more work... It was a good back to basics kind of class, with our instructor leaving us with a comment that we would try to start working our kata next week.

I learned that the first competition of the season for our group of schools will be on October 15. Competitions are always on Sundays and I'm kind of tempted to enter us in it. As you can see in the list of competitions for 2005-06 (sorry for the French, looks like they have not updated their English listing yet), there are 6 competitions in all during the season. Last year, we did the last three. The fourth one on the list, the Lévision Open, is our "home" competition, as it is organised by our school. That one's a given as is the Quebec Open. The NDL Open was the one we had the least fun at, mostly because it looked to be a bit too big for what they seemed able to handle. On the other hand, the Quebec Open, which was HUGE, ran smoothly. Right now, I'm thinking we might make 6 of them, taking the 2nd and 4th off, but this all remains to be seen...

Oh, and when I told you I was happy with how my learning of Sushi no kon sho went, I was even able to do it again, this time way later in the afternoon, in the backyard of our house, with no outside help, as if anybody could have helped me there anyway ;)

FM