Quiet weekend before the long break

Not much happened this past weekend. I didn't practice my bo on Friday, simply decided to take a break to rest a nagging hurt in my left shoulder. It's not much, but I can feel a tingle when I lift it, so I thought it was better to take that Friday off, especially with the upcoming holiday break that will allow me to rest it. That and I'm going through a rough cold right now. Congestions, other muscle pains, a bit of back stiffness (that is thaks to God now gone only 2 days after it appeared). That Friday trip to the dojo still brought something nice. The DVD for the show is available and I received our copy of it on Friday. I will extract my (edited) performance of my kata at one point during the holiday break and will share it with you in a post here. The edit is kind of nice. At least you don't see me running after my bo anymore. :)

We both had a traditional class on Saturday morning. I worked a bit more on Cat 3, not only for myself, but helping out others complete it. I like helping out people, although I always try to stay within what I know. These are people at my belt level, so I try to simply show the movements, like trying to do the kata super slowly so they can follow, or repeating what I have been told to correct from my instructors. We finished the class working on advanced self defense techniques. Despite not having worked on them too much in the last few weeks, mostly because I concentrated my training time on my competition kata, I felt that they were still coming to me all right.

At the end of that class is when it came, out of the blue, well not really as I had been expecting talks about it. Our instructor closed the class by pointing at me and another brown belt, saying a 2nd kyu test should be coming after the Holiday break. As I said, I was sort of expecting to hear about it, just unsure when it'll be. I think I'd be read to test if asked to, but would be nice to hear about it in advance...

We had a semi-private bo class in the afternoon and it turned out to be a very technical one. Our instructor asked us if there were parts of our kata that we had problems with. Andrew was always non-commital but I could find many little spots so I kind of lead our instructor. His way of seeing things is that when one is bothering you, you have to find a similar but tougher move to work one, so that when you go back to the move bothering you, you find it much easier than before. A very interesting class, if not super intensive physically. By that I mean that I get a good workout if I do my kata over and over, as he's been having us do in the last few weeks, but maybe it was better that way. With the shortness of breath that came with my cold, I'm not sure I would have been able to go through many reps of my kata without falling over.

That's where the long break starts. I have class tonight, but the dojo closes on Friday night, after that evening's class, and will reopen on Saturday, January 6 for the yearly two weeks break of the holidays. I'm welcoming this break. The last month has been intense with the show and that last competition, and even though I would not have minded having class, taking a couple of Saturdays easy at home will be very nice.

I wanted to film myself doing my bo kata in super slow motion of Saturday afternoon, but I completely forgot about it and left my camera at home. I'll try to do that after the Holiday break.

I have class tonight and will probably skip again on the Friday evening practice so tonight will probably be my last hour of class for a little while. I intend to practice my kata in the basement and maybe pull out the free weights from the dust. Can't let myself get all out of shape with a possible test in January, can I?

FM