Long weekend recap

Not only was this past weekend a long one for us Canadians, it was also a pretty active one for Andrew and I. Let's get right to it.


Friday night bonus

Andrew usually gets a traditional class on Friday evenings and I used to find some room to practice my bo in an adjacent room, while a private class of two is going on. Say I used to because I had not done it in a long while. I spent one hour practicing some basic moves, mostly those not taking much room. I often like to simply hang there, working quietly, often listening for tips our instructor is giving to the two kids he's teaching. I'm not disturbing them and not taking any of the instructor's time, but sometimes I learn a thing here or there.

I did come out of it with an idea for an addition to my bo kata though. Even got a video of it. Look for it a bit later in this post. ;)

What I also like about that one hour is that since it's free practice, I can kind of take a break at times and watch my boy practice or perform his kata. They did something neat during that class. Since there's a competition coming up, they did a mock competition, including presentation to the judges for a kata, performing said kata and even some point sparring to end the class. Even better than a formal competition, they corrected the kids right after they'd performed their kata. Andrew surprised me, his Crane kata is not bad, not bad at all. Still a bit of work needed but he's made big strides in the last couple of weeks.


Saturday morning class

After our usual warmup, we worked a bit on forms. We went through pinan 3, Circle of the Tiger, the Statue of the Crane and our latest, which for me is Cat 2, the form I will present this weekend. Was again happy with how they went. It's also always nice to get little things corrected in your basic forms.

We then went on to work on some selfdefense techniques against knife attack. These are not required until you are actually a black belt, but we sometimes work on them anyway and it makes for some very interesting classes. Also nice when you start seeing that a knife thrust is just the same as a direct punch, thus making the technique against a knife thrust just as useful against a direct punch.

We finished class with a couple of quick renditions of Sushi no kon sho. As I said before, Sushi no kon sho is the one traditional bo kata that is part of the requirements to get a black belt in our style. It's also the one bo kata that underbelts who don't take open bo class usually present in competition. It sure will be nice now to watch it be performed and actually know if a mistake was made or not. I remember a fellow student from my school who came out of the ring at the Quebec Open and whispered to me that she'd made a mistake and asked me if it looked real bad. I just couldn't tell her if she recovered well or not, I just didn't know the form well enough to comment. I probably would not be able to judge a competition on the finer points right now, but I think I'd know if someone took a misstep somewhere.



Saturday bo class

Our afternoon bo class was just as crowded as a week ago but we got it working. Worked mostly on my bo kata and trying to incorporate the move I learned about on Friday. That move is simply a new way of throwing my bo. See, about two third of the away through my kata, I throw my bo from my right to my left hand. What I saw on Friday is a different way of making that throw. Instead of simply rolling the bo over my right hand and throwing it with a spin, I roll it over the hand, then do a sweeping move with the hand before throwing it. Video to come soon, in fact, just a bit later in this post ;)

I got to perform my kata in front of our instructor at the end of class and he said he liked it. I had talked with him about the throw and he said he liked it too when I practiced it and he said it worked well in the kata too. I had in mind to do the kata with all my full force kiai in place but was a bit stiff to start with and missed one. He kind of picked on that, saying I didn't looking "into" the kata until about a third of it was done. He added I really looked like I got hot after my first kiai, so he recommended me to add a kiai fairly early in the kata and I agree with that.

One thing to note though, as I was practicing that new move and other bo handling techniques, I dropped my bo what seemed like a record number of times for a one hour class but when I got to perform the kata "for real", I got it done without a glitch. This makes me feel good for the upcoming competition.



Sunday afternoon fooling around ;)

okay, now what? Sunday afternoon??? Yup :) But as the subtitle says, it was more fooling around with my bo and my new karate training gear. Please meet my new best friend:


Got it on Saturday afternoon, in preparation for next Sunday's competition. Wanted to test it and I set it on a little table outside and took the bo with me with work on my new throw. My compute doesn't have a firewire port but I was able to transfer what little clip I had filmed to DVD and ripped it on the PC for you viewing pleasure. :)

click here to see me performing my old style of bo throw

The first couple of times I throw it is how I have always done it in my kata and the third time is a lousy way of the new bo throw.

click here to see me performing my new style of bo throw

I think you can better see what I meant by doing a "sweeping move before the throw". With some more work, I think it'll come in nicely in the kata itself.



Monday night class

Monday was Thanksgiving for us here in Canada and as thus, a day off work. We worked on Halloween decorations, then cleaned up around the house, got the patio furnitures into the shed and such mundane stuff. After dinner, I dozed off in the recliner in the living room and it took a good kick in the butt to get me off it and go to class.

Turned out to be an interesting class to say the least as we worked on rolls. Backward roll first, then combination forward then backward roll. Some stuff we don't often spend a lot of time on but are still part of the curriculum of our school.

We then went on to work on falling. Side falls, forward fall, backward fall and then incorporated that two by two with a throw. You get thrown, try to fall the right way. Again, not that we never work on that, but it's not often than we spend a good 30 minutes of a class specifically working on falling.

All in all, another interesting class that got more and more interesting as it went on...

FM