Taming the horse stance

Usagi Yojimbo, you know him?

2007-06-07T15:07:00.000-04:00

I can almost hear Mat scrambling to his Japanese-to-English dictionary, trying to translate the terms, Usagi Yojimbo. That is if he doesn't already know about the Rabbit Bodyguard... :)

Yup, that's what it means, Usagi means Rabbit and Yojimbo means Bodyguard. And where the heck have I found such a term you may ask? In the comic book series of the same name, written by Stan Sakai. The series has been going on strong for more than 20 years now, starting way back in 1986. It relates the story of a ronin (i.e. masterless) samurai who has become a bodyguard for hire. To help you understand, I'll simply repost the wikipedia entry for Usagi Yojimbo:

Set primarily at the beginning of Edo period Japan (early 17th century), with anthropomorphic animals replacing humans, it features a rabbit ronin, Miyamoto Usagi, who wanders the land on a musha shugyo (warrior's pilgrimage) occasionally selling his services as a bodyguard. The character of Usagi has been inspired by the famous swordsman Miyamoto Musashi while the tone and inspirations of the stories are heavily influenced by Groo the Wanderer, Lone Wolf and Cub and the films of the acclaimed director Akira Kurosawa.

The books consist of short stories, and occasionally novel-length stories, with underlying larger plotlines which culminate in long extended story lines. The stories include many references to Japanese history and Japanese folklore, and sometimes include mythical creatures. The architecture, clothes, weapons, and other objects are drawn with a faithfulness to the period's style. There are often stories whose purpose is to illustrate various elements of Japanese arts and crafts, such as the fashioning of kites, swords, and pottery. Those efforts have been successful enough for the series to be awarded a Parent's Choice Award for its educational value. The series also follows the standard Japanese naming convention for all featured characters: their surname followed by their given name.

So yeah, Usagi is a rabbit fighting with all sorts of other animals. Bad dudes can be rhinoceroses or wild cats or even moles. It is very cool and a lot of fun.

I'm currently reading book 2 of the collected series and while I loved book 1 a lot, book 2 is really where it picks up steam and explains a lot of stuff about Miyamoto Usagi. It's told as a sort of flashback story by Miyamoto Usagi himself, going back to how he was trained to be the samurai that he is now, and also how he came to be masterless.

The way it's told, you can tell that author Stan Sakai, a third generation Japanese-American who was born in Kyoto Japan but grew up in Hawaii and later in Calofornia, has done his research well. You can read and interview with him here where he tells about how he does his research and how his mom who was born and raised in Japan is his best source of information. Everything as authentic as one would think that feudal (early 17th century) Japan would feel.

Even better, it's a good read for kids too, at least for kids as young as 9 I would think. Sure there is swordfighting but the fights are not real graphic. At the same time, there's plenty of great teachings present in the books. The first example is how his teacher thaught him at first. He asked him to get wood and water and everytime he'd be close to him, he would bonk him in the head with a bambo pole. At first Usagi didn't understand why, until he started getting wary of the bambo pole and started always behind aware of his surrounding cause he would never know where the teacher would be to bonk him in the head. Behind a tree, at the corner of a clearing in the woods, right behind a door, etc. That part had a pretty strong Mr. Miyagi feeling to it where you'd look at how his sensei is teaching him and you'd wonder where he is going with it, then it hits you. Very cool.

There are also great teachings through the words of his wise teacher. Such as these gems: "As a samurai, you must strive for perfecton in body and spirit. Duty and honor are the essence of bushido, the way of the warrior, and should be preserved at the cost of your own life."

Sure, the same would probably not apply today, but remember, we're talking about early 17th century here. It fits...

Then there's more: " A samurai's body is the manifestation of his spirit. To have a strong body, you must have a strong spirit. So your inner self must be cultivated just as much as your outer shell..... The sword is the sould of the samurai and his badge of station. To appear in public without it is a disgrace. But behind the sould is the spirit. When you strike, first strike with your spirit. Look into your adversary's hara into his center being. Know how he will strike, before he, himself does. Often the duel is over before the first blow is even struck. reach out for your spirit. Feel for the hidden dangers lurking..."

And with that, as Usagi was walking under a tree branch loaded with snow, the teacher lightly tapped the branch above his head and before Usagi realized it, he was covered with snow. :)

And then even better, something I too take for my own self: "Every day of our lives is an education. You must strive to learn something new every day."

Sooooo simple, yet very true.

And there's more, this time relating more the what it's about to be a samurai: "The sword is not just a weapon. It's also a mirror. It reflects the soul of the samurai. It is the soul of the samurai. Just as the blade can be tarnished, so can the sould be corroded. Swordsmanship is a discipline and a way of strengthening one's inner self. So keep your soul sharp and clear. Remember... a true samurai does not look for a fight... but tries to avoid it. The best souls are those kept in their scabbards."

So much of that can also apply to us as martial artist. You too should not look for a fight but try to avoid it.

As you can see, these little teachings can even be understood by kiddos of around 9 to 12 years of age. And I'm sure they'll enjoy the samurais splitting flies in two with their swords. :)

I've read that this book is sort of difficult to find. I bought my copy from indigo.ca (especially good for Canadian readers) but I see that amazon.com also have a few copies in stock.

I'm sure many smaller comic shops might have copies of it lying around, but I have found that indigo and amazon (either .ca or .com) are the cheaper ways to go when buying trade paperbacks of comic books.

Back to twice a week

As for my karate training, I've gone back to my previous twice a week schedule for the Summer. I used to take an extra hour of class on Wednesday nights, but a coworker of mine told me about the 30+ soccer league he played in and that kind of rekindled my old love for the round ball. To the store I went, bought some cleats and shing guards and played my first game yesterday. I'm sure it'll do wonders to my overall fitness to be able to run and exerts myself in the open and in the long run, my karate fitness will only be better.

FM

Throws

2007-05-29T15:13:00.000-04:00

Most of the class was spent working on something I feel like I need the most to work on: throws.

I'm beginning to get a feel as to what I can do once I've blocked the first strike. I can do a sequence of counterstrikes, add in one of maybe four different locks and end it with a sweep pretty easily, but every time I work up the courage to end the sequence with the most basic hip throw, it turns out ugly.

I've found that as a beginner with throws, sometimes the throwee is almost as important as the trower. With that I mean that if somebody who's about to be "victim" of a throw decides that he will lock and push himself backward in anticipation of the throw, since he/she really knows the throw is coming, well it makes it twice as hard to effectively throw the person. I was lucky to be paired with a black belt young lady yesterday. Not only was she able to throw my whole 206 lbs big body over her hip, she especially knew how to take the fall that comes from a throw. Sure, we don't drop anybody to the floor as we hold on to them as the throw happens, but somebody who's not feeling safe with their falling pretty much always makes it tough for the thrower.

Yeah, yeah, I know, if I had to throw somebody in the street, he wouldn't let me do whatever I want and take my sweet time positionning myself, but still, I'd probably have some surprise effect to my advantage. That surprise effect is pretty much absent in the dojo and getting to work with her yesterday, I was able to build some confidence in my throws, so much so that after the class, I felt much better with them.

I even learned a good lesson from that class. Boxer shorts are not good for a karate class. That landing on the ground has tendency to squeeze some parts that are meant to only be sqeezed gently. :D

And before you ask, no, it wasn't me but the guy whom I threw over my hip that suffered. He took a long walk and was fine afterward, don't worry. :)

FM

That feeling of being watched

2007-05-25T12:37:00.000-04:00

Being a higher belt comes with some responsibility, a bit like Spider-Man, you know, with great power comes great responsibility. :)

Well, not so much responsibility, but that feeling that people can look up to you, that they want to see how you do a certain technique. It happened to me in last night's class. It wasn't the first time it happened, but it had a special feel to it.

We started class with a very solid cardio warmup and followed it with a review of our "fall" technique, you know, how you break a fall. First to the right, then to the left, falling forward, or backward. We then moved on to rolls, forward and backward. The forward roll is a great to "roll with it", as it's name implies, when you are falling forward and you don't want to hurst yourself. I think I have linked to the Aikido Ferret in the past to demonstrate the forward roll, but here it is again.

Up until then, we were still all in a big group, two rows of students. That was a class for intermediate and advanced students, i.e. blue to brown belts with even one black belt. Some of the newly graduated blue belts seemed to be struggling with their rolls, and not only the backward roll which can be tricky, but even with the forward roll. It's only when our instructor asked us to all line up at the back wall that it took an interesting turn. He asked us to do a forward roll ending with a tap to break the fall, meaning he wanted us not to get up after the roll but simply tap and stop right there. The kicker was, he wanted us to do them one by one, starting at one end of the line where mostly blue belts were up to the other end where the brown belts, yours truly included, were. The first few went and had indeed a bit of problem, which I know was just normal. Then my the turn of a brown belt came right before me and he too kind of struggled. Then my turn. I felt like I had 15 sets of eyes watching me. For some stupid reason, I didn't want to disappoint them. That thought didn't last very long in my mind. I told myself I was doing karate for my own self, not for others, and the roll went very well. Still it was very interesting to feel the tension, sort of, that other people were kind of looking up to me to see it done properly. Interesting in the sense that I have done that so many times. Watch how a kata is done by a higher ranked student and you learn. Watch how they do a certain technique and you might learn something. There is just so much to learn by simply watching, and listening...

FM

2 minutes to midnite

2007-05-21T15:00:00.000-04:00

Well, not really two minutes, more like 105 minutes, but still, in the grand scheme of things, it was close enough. Stay with me...

The weekend started out well with a gorgeous Saturday. Nice weather, all sunny and bright. Had class at 11:15, a class where only 5 students were present. I hope the attendance won't drop too much for the Summer session because I wouldn't want the school merging the class with the 10am one where they are already 15 to 20 attending. Going from being 10-12 (during the Fall and winter sessions) to 20-25 could be rough.

Anyway for now, we enjoyed a semi private class. We reviewed basics starting with Cat 3, down to Cat 2, and finally Cat 1 and then we asked if we could review our KC. Instructor pinpointed stuff to correct. Always good to be corrected but then also to realize that you are working on finer points. A hand here, a strike there, finally a stance to adjust slightly...

We ended class with a session of the circle of love. It went well although I'll have to work on my hip throw. Still too robotic to my liking.

Andrew had class at 12:15 and I stayed in the room next to his class and I practiced for a good 30-40 minutes. I went over sushi no kon sho two or three times, adding a bit more flow and intent to it, trying to part with the robotic way of doing the kata, you know when you think before you make a move. I also did all my 36 self defense techniques from the perspective of both a right hand but also a left hand attacker. Went smoothly. The cold is out and I can feel my head working much better.

When I finally got back home, it definitely was a gorgeous day but I still reminded my wife that if she wanted to practice, I'd be ready when she would be. She said it was too nice a day to practice inside and that she would practice when it would rain (rain was forecasted for Sunday). I didn't mind so much as it was indeed a nice day and I got to work around the house and vacuum the remaining dirt from the bottom of the pool.

Sunday was a really bad weather day. Strong winds, hard rain all day. I had the duty of grocery shopping and got home around 2:30pm at which point I again reminded her that if she wanted to practice, I was all hers. She told me something along the lines of "I feel so lazy, my head says I should, my heart is telling me to go lie on the couch". *sigh* I told her to do as she wish but that she shouldn't complain after her next class that she didn't remember a thing from a week ago. She simply nodded.

We watched some TV from 9 to 10 and before going back to surf the net a bit, I told her she still could practice if she wanted to. I wasn't really pressuring her, don't worry, and it's probably why she replied with "hey, I feel like it now actually". It was 10:15pm on Sunday night, thus the 105 minutes before midnight. ;) And so we practiced. We reviewed everything she'd learned over two weeks. She vaguely remembered what she'd worked on, or more the sequence of things she'd worked on during her two classes, so it was easy to put it back together. We covered the basics of three punches she'd seen, three kicks, and three self defense techniques (Checking the storm, Battering ram, Downward hammer).

It was cool and lasted all of 30 minutes. 30 Minutes during which I never lost my patience (I'm known for that when she asks me to teach her something computer related). I was kinda proud of that from some weird reason. She seemed to appreciate the time spent working on it and me, well I was just happy that she cared enough to even think about practicing. Baby steps as they say, baby steps.

Today is a holiday in Canada, Victoria Day they call it. It's not a mandatory holiday and for some reason, I'm at work while both kids and mommy are relaxing at home. I will be taking a class at 7 tonight, but that's normal for me. What will not be normal is that I reminded my wife that there's a beginner's class on Mondays at 6 and that maybe, being that she's at home today, it would be a better idea for her to go to class today instead of tomorrow for this week. So, she wil be taking a class right before mine tonight and I should get to watch the end of her class. I'll try to make myself tiny and hide in a corner, cause I know she'll feel overly self conscious... :)

FM

So, what's your gameplan?

2007-05-17T15:01:00.000-04:00

I'll tell you, if there'S one thing from my wife hat irks me more than anything (other than her tardiness), it's her coming to me on a perfect Saturday morning, as I'm relaxing, drinking my coffee and reading the paper, and she asks me the death sentence question: "So, what's your gameplan for the weekend?"

My whole work week is planned by the minute. There are meetings to attend and deadlines to meet, tasks to finish, and then sport events not to forget in the evenings. When the weekend comes, I don't necessarily want to plan out every little thing that I will do around the house. I mean, some things are set in stone, like our karate classes in the morning, or soccer/football practices, and while I usually have a pretty good idea of what I will do around the house, I don't plan it all on Saturday morning, minute for minute.

She knows it irks me and she sometimes has fun pushing it to me. I used to get mad (well somewhat mad) but we now laugh about it as she tries to find subtle ways of asking without same the G word. :)

Why am I telling you this? Well yesterday night, as we were getting ready to go to bed, she turned to me, all dead serious and well, here's the exchange that took place:

HER: Now listen to me.
ME (in my head): huhoh...
HER: I have stuff I want you to work on this Saturday.
ME (out loud): What? it's only Wednesday night, what
HER: Yeah, things I really want you to do. I'm setting up your gameplan in advance.
ME (in my head): oh no, not that word again...
HER: It's very important and I want you to do it Saturday.

By then, I was getting skeptical as she didn't look mad or anything, almost playful, with a funny crooked smile growing up at the corner of her mouth.

ME: What's so important you have to ask three days in advance?
HER (with a huge grin): I want you to help me practice what I have learned in karate so far.

I stood there speechless with my lower jaw dropped open on the pillow. :D

I'm not completely sure if she was really serious, but I think so. She sorta complained after her Tuesday class that she didn't remember much of what she'd done a week ago. I had told her, yet again, that it was the reason why I advocated taking two classes a week, that or practice at home.

I guess she's going for the private classes at home. We'll see on Saturday. :)

FM

feeling off... and on

2007-05-16T12:45:00.000-04:00

It was not my best class of karate last Monday. I felt off. Maybe it's the cold I'm still fighting but when our instructor took us through the 36 self defense techniques, I often had to think hard about how one would start and such things. I even did a totally different technique than the one asked, only to realize it when he called the next one. I was not reacting to what he was calling, but trying to do them in the order I though they would come. Really not my best.

We then worked on some deflecting and it went a bit better. By deflecting, I mean if someone is attempting a lapel grab and I just do that, deflect him and get out of his way in such a manner that he's left grabbing air. Was very interesting.

That cold I just mentionned is kinda going away, but I have decided that I would not take a class today. Next class will be Saturday.

One who seems to be enjoying her karate is my wife. She was disciplined enough yesterday to leave work at 5pm sharp in order to attend her second karate class. Not sure if you remember, but I must have mentionned in the past about my frustrations with her not always being able to be home on time for me to leave for karate. Well to see her dedicated to not missing her class is absolutely fantastic to me.

And even better, she seems to be digging it. She told me that last night's class wasn't so much cardio work, but that she could feel how she worked her abs by simply having to hold the forward stance for a good part of the class. She was just like a kid as she got home and I asked her what she'd learned. She quickly replied "don't say it, don't say it, it goes like this!" and she demonstrated to me a well done KC #1. Way to go momma. :)

Meanwhile for Andrew, since he's done almost enough class in advance not to have to go more than maybe 8 to 10 times this Summer, I decided that we would start skipping his Tuesday class and go back to a two a week schedule. He asked me why and I I explained it to him, reminding him how he usually stops for a few weeks during Summer time. He told me that this Summer, he doesn't want to stopp for too long. He added "cause I love karate, dad!". That's my boy... :)

FM

Tired kata and the circle of love

2007-05-13T22:55:00.001-04:00

Our instructor had us go through an intense opening of class Saturday. After going through our usual stretch/warmup routine, he first told us to go through Pinan 1 to 3 in a stretch. After that came 25 pushups and then he asked for Circle of the Tiger and Statue of the Crane, again without a break, followed by 25 more pushups. After that came Cat 1 and Cat 2 and another 25 pushups only to finish the run with Cat 3.

His intentions were simple: to show us what it is to have to deliver our katas when we're tired. You just can't concentrate on your tiredness or else you delivery of the kata goes by the wayside. We have to thank the three black belt hopefuls for that tough lesson. :)

And I can thank them for the pain I had in my arms today while vacuuming the swimming pool, ugh... What doesn't kill you makes you strong they say...

We then worked on some bo work but not really sushi no kon sho as a kata per se, but more on the basics of striking with a bo the traditional way. See, in open forms, when you start a strike with the bo next to your right ear, the left hand will go to your left hip and the right hand will slide up the bo to remain parallel to the floor. In traditional strikes, the left hands kind of extends forward when the bo is chambered close to the right ear and it will also go to the left hip, but then will be closer to the lower part of the bo. The right hand will then slide down as you strike, leaving you with a longer part of the bo available for a longer reach. I hope this is clear enough, but let me say that to me it's a big adjustment. I've been taking open bo classes for two years now and while I can spin and throw it a few different ways, I've never really taken much time to work on traditional bo strikes. I'm getting to it though... :)

We ended class with 6 of us forming a circle around one person which we ended up attacking alternatively and he/she would have to defend with anything he/she could think of, trying never to use the same defence twice and incorporating some locks and throws in there. To add to the challenge, our instructor distributed a couple clubs and a knife to some of the attackers. That simply added a bit to the love felt in that Circle of love. :)

Defending against weapons is a whole other though. You can back off against a knif, you have to block the arm at its highest point and always keep control of the arm that has the knife. We had a good example of what not to do when a tall 14yo kid, black belt hopeful, blocked the knife attacker at the forearm, stayed in control and all, until he decided to unarm his attacker and grab the knife as if it were a club, i.e. straight by the blade. Err, ooops. :D

FM

And how's the FrogMan doing in all of this???

2007-05-11T18:13:00.000-04:00

With that gazillion updates out of the way, here's a bit about how it's going for me.

Well, it's going quite well thank you. Ever since my mother in law has retired at the end of March, I've been trying to take three classes a week. It was kinda tough not to miss one at first, for many little reasons, but for the last five weeks, I've effectively clocked in three hours of class a week and let me tell you, I've never felt better. Dang I love how it's going on right now. I feel my abs getting ever so tighter with every class (no six pack showing yet, give me a break ;) ), my moves feel more natural although I know I still need to perfect everything.

There was a time where I thought, or could I say feared, that I would be asked to take the pretest for the black belt. It came the week before said pretest. My weeknight instructor, after we'd finished working on self defense techniques, addressed us, a group of brown belts. He reminded the two people who'd already been booked for the pretest that they had to keep working hard but it's when he turned to everyone else that I felt personally singled out. He went on to say that the others, well they are the next wave of black belt hopefuls and that we always had to work hard because, well, you never know if one of your instructors is not gonna come to you before/during/after a class and tell you that oops, he might have forgotten to put you on the test. I took a look around and dang, I was the only 2nd kyu in class. How could I not feel that being told to me directly???

Anyway, the pretest was on May 2nd and it has come and gone without me on it. I heard it went very well for everyone involved and nobody was turned down, i.e. everybody received their 1st kyu and will go on to test for the black on June 17.

Now what?

Could there be another pretest for people who were borderline ready at the time of the first pretest? Maybe.

Would they consider me borderline ready? Who knows, maybe.

Could they ask me to test without taking a pretest? I have no clue

Do I even consider myself ready? I will never really think that I'm ready, I'm like that. Only by comparing myself to the others who've been confirmed to the test can I try to assess my level of readiness. And that's where all of this wondering comes from. In that regards I'd probably say that I could be ready for June 17. I know all of the curriculum quite well and my freestyle self defense is improving greatly on a weekly basis.

I have no clue what could happen between now and June 17. I'm guessing that the only time I'll be sure I'm not on the test is on the 17th if I'm sitting at home and not stressing it out in a crowded dojo with many other black belt hopefuls. What can I do about it? Not much but train and train and train some more, do as if I was scheduled to be on that test. That's one of the main reason why I plan on going three times a week until mid-June and why I do a lot of vizualisation at home and during breaks at work. If anything happens and somebody comes to me telling me "we think you could be ready, do you think you'd be ready?", I wanna be able to answer confidently with a "yes, I am".

Anyway, in the grand scheme of things, it's not as if taking more classes now will be a total waste of my time. I'm having fun and it's not a chore for me to take more class. Why not keep it that way?

FM

Quebec Open review on SportMartialArts.com

2007-05-11T10:02:00.000-04:00

Wanna know what the Quebec Open was like this year? Then hop on over to sportmartialarts.com and read their review. Or should I say glowing review as they seem to have had a lot of fun in Quebec City...

FM

Three down, one to go...

2007-05-10T22:08:00.000-04:00

Picture this. We're maybe 15 minutes before the start of the Quebec Open Saturday night show and my wife turns to me to ask me this simple yet weird question: "Can someone take on karate classes, yet remain a white belt forever?"

Huh, say that again...

She caught me off guard, I had no clue why she was asking me this although she explained eventually. Turns out she was starting to feel like she's a bit out of shape and she's seeing how I like it, how Andrew likes it and especially how Andrew and I were marching up the four flights of stairs that led to the competition site that day without really slowing down our pace (we did wait for her at the top ;) ) while she had sort of a bit of trouble walking on up and was more than just a bit out of breath after moving up the stairs. She then revealed to me that she might be thinking about taking karate lessons. Her that has said quite a few times in the last four years that no, karate was not for her, she was thinking about taking up karate classes but she said that tests were making her nervous. I simply told her that they only ask you to test when they know you are ready, and well, a belt test is simply you going out there and showing stuff that you already know and giving out your best physically. You start your classes and if they ask for 15 pushups and you can do 4, well that's your starting point. Maybe in a couple of weeks you'll be able to do 6, then 8, then maybe you'll top at 10, but those 10 will become increasingly easier to go through...

We left it at that for the Saturday evening. On Sunday, I had already thought about asking how much it would cost when I'd go to the dojo for my Monday night class, but little did I expect her to specifically tell me to ask and see what the schedule would be. She was serious about enquiring about it, woah...

I asked about it, came back with some prices and a schedule. Price was not an issue to me, whatever sport she wants to do, she will be allowed to do, short of weekly bungy jumping, but I know it's not her style :) The schedule though would be a toughie. Even though they say you can sign up at anytime of the year, May is not a particularly well viewed time to start up a new activity like karate, what with Summer coming up and all. There are usually many beginners class around September and in January, but they often get merged with biger classes as the months go by. I know from experience as I started in April four years ago and I was in the middle of a bunch of yellow and orange belts.

Anyway, she though about it, then about it some more until this past Monday when on the phone at lunch time she told me "okay, you sign me up tonight, I'm gonna start tomorrow". Say what again??? The Tuesday night class is at 6 and it's a tight fit to make it from work to the dojo for her, so I signed her up one day in advance and she made it on time Tuesday for her first class.

She decided to start on a once a week schedule for a 12 weeks session, "just to see if I like it". Weird thing, I feared that she'd hate it. Don't ask me why, I have no clue. I so wanted her to like what I (and Andrew) like so much, what we've made our passion. Funny thing, Andrew had class at 7 that Tuesday night, so we walked in front of the big window of her classroom. I was not staring at her, but she saw me, waved and then quickly shooed us away. Reading John Vesia's post titled Looking Good, I see him describing her (and me too) in her first class.

Right after her class, in the hall of the dojo, I asked her how she liked it. Her first answer was simple: "man it's complicated" but she quietly looked like she'd enjoyed it. Back home, she told me she'd learned a sequence of moves but had forgotten the name of it. She wouldn't show me at first, "I'm shy, you're gonna laugh at me". Dang, why would I? She took a deep breath and showed me, inward sweeping left to right block with the left hand, followed with an outward sweeping left to right block with the right hand, a kick and you walk out of it. She'd just learned Checking the Storm... I almost cried of pride. Honestly, I was very happy that she was getting into this.

She then went on to show me how she'd learn to do low sidekicks and dang, she's got a way better weight transfer than I used to have not so long ago. She showed me another technique she'd partially learned and I immediately recognized Battering Ram, a technique against a lapel grab. It was far from perfect, but she was able to see the effect of the different strikes as I explained them to her.

She kept on talking about her class, enthusiastically I must say, for another 30 minutes. I think she's hooked. She's not super fit physically but I kept telling her that the most important thing is not to be able to do as much as the other, but to compare yourself to yourself alone and try to outdo yourself from class to class.

Sure, it's only once a week, for now.

Sure, it's only for 12 weeks, for now.

I'm hoping she sticks to it in the long run.

As I titled this post, three down, one to go. The one left is not even three and a half and they don't take kids before they turn four. I've asked him a few times, if he's gonna take on karate lessons when he turns four and the answer is pretty much always "oh yeah daddy"...

FM

Quebec Open videos

2007-05-10T16:01:00.000-04:00

Here's a compilation of our fours katas in the order they happened. Your comments are welcome, as always.

Read the previous post for the story about the whole day...

FM

Quebec Open on April 28

2007-05-10T15:59:00.000-04:00

Saturday April 28 was another big day in our karate life as the Quebec Open was happening that day. For both Andrew and I, it was our second time competing in that international competition. We both entered in only two classes, weapon and traditional form.

Since we'd registered Andrew before he was even asked to test for his brown belt, he competed with his green belt. He came in fifth place out of eight with his bo form. I didn't see him perform live, as I was competing myself, but after watching the video, I thought he did ok. He might lack a bit in his stances and with his attitude, or aggressiveness so to speak. My wife commented to me that some of the other kids were really acting like little warriors. I'm pretty sure that Andrew's presentation with his bo form suffered a bit compared to others due to the fact that he "only" had one hour a week of bo while I'm sure some others in this kind of competition must take 2+ hours a week, sometimes in private classes. Andrew was happy this Winter concentrating on his traditional karate which paid off with a brown belt, so I was all right with it.

They were something like 20 to compete in his traditional form category and from my calculations/assessment, he probably came in right in the middle, say about 10th. He did a good rendition of Cat 1, a kata he had to know to pass his brown belt, but that he didn't fully learn until maybe a month before testing. That's definitely not the same as when he was presenting Circle of the Tiger after almost a year and a half of perfectionning it. Still, I thought he did well with it.

Way I see it with every competition that Andrew (or even I) enters is this. I ask myself "is this the best he's ever done it?" or "has he given it his all?". Then if the answer is "YES", the end results in terms of placement matters very little.

As for me, I was signed up to compete in both weapon and traditional forms too. Well, guess what, I dropped my bo, again. :( A tiny little tip to my knee as I start a figure eight and whoops, there it goes. They still gave me second place out of three competitors. Just as for Andrew, I have not had as much of a chance to train with my bo. If you remember, the schedule was jumbled a bit after the Holiday break, leading to me losing some valuable bo training spot and let's just say that at minus 30 celsius, training outside was not an option this Winter. :) I come out of this thinking that if I had not dropped it, I could have come out of it in first place.

The good result, the one that really made me proud, came in the traditional form category. I had the pleasure meet Marc, aka MrX, who was competing in that same category and took third place, but that's not what I'm so proud of. I presented what I thought at the time was a good kata, even though everytime I watch the video I keep finding things I could have done better, but anyway, I came out of it in second place out of eight competitors. As I said, I worked hard on my Cat 3 for maybe the month prior to the competition. I felt good with it until the morning of the competition where I had trouble making my back kicks. You can see it where I lose balance with my first back kick and severely slow down the second one in order not to lose it again. I have since found why. The flooring on which I always train at the dojo is a very cushy kind of carpet. We're talking about a kinda dense but also kinda soft two inch thick mat. As weird as this may sound, I have found my balance on that kind of flooring but just could not find it back on a harder floor. I will work on that in the future.

Anyway, it was a great day. Competition ran quite smoothly. I was able to shake hands with Mr Akarien, Mrx, and even a commenter on my blog, the friendly Myrika. Hi all, it was real nice talking to you all. The Saturday evening show was just wow after wow, a great show, enjoyed by the whole family, my wife included.

I'm just a bit sad that it was quite certainly the last time I will compete there. By April of next year, I will quite probably be a black belt. As an adult brown belt, you compete against other adults who've been doing karate for about the same time as you have been doing it, anywhere from 3 to 5 years. As a black belt, in the 30-39 category, well, it is wide open. There are no category for the shodan or the nidan, or other dan if you seem where I'm going. At 37 next year, I could be against a 31 year old who's been doing karate for the last 27 years of his life. Ouch... I will probably dedicate my Quebec Open experience to following Andrew around and watching the Saturday night show. :)

Yeah, you heard me talk about videos, I'll get to them soon but first a little picture slideshow... Look at those smiles :)

As for the videos after testing it a bit, I'll post them in a new post, as the picasa slideshow seems to be making it choppy a bit... hang in there, we'll be right back...

FM

Way to go kiddo!!!

2007-05-10T15:03:00.000-04:00

Almost a month ago to this day, I reported that Andrew was set to test for his brown belt. Not only did he test for it on Thursday April 26, four days after the inter-satellite competition, but he passed it with very positive reviews! One big ATTABOY for my Andrew!!! :)

Here's a little picture of him with his instructor and owner of our school. (she only came for the end of the test, thus explaining not wearing her gi, she felt bad about it but I insisted for a pic...)

I'm sure you can see how proud he looked, but also how pink his cheeks were. They worked him out pretty good for a couple of hours. :)

The instructor who was in charge of evaluating them was my weeknight instructor and as I said, he gave me good comments about Andrew. He told me that his strikes were good and precise and that he knew all of his curriculum without fault.

I know on that picture you can't see my face, but I had, and still have, a proud smile on my face... :)

FM

Inter-satellite competition on April 22

2007-05-10T14:59:00.000-04:00

On April 22, our school held a local competition only for kids 14 and under. They call it the "inter-satellite" because it's really meant only for kids from the main school or from one of the 8 or 10 satellite schools that are affiliated with us. These satellite schools are usually no more, no less than kids from surrounding town taking classes once or even twice a week in the gymnasium of their regular school. These classes are given by instructors who come from the main school.

I think satellite schools are great because they allow kids who live maybe up to 45 mintues from the main school, kind of into the country, the chance to learn a bit of karate. I also think that the "inster-satellite" sompetition is better than great, as it allows all these kids a chance to see what a competition is in a more informal setting. One tiny thing I didn't like about the setup, but I'll get to it in a moment.

Andrew entered in both weapon and traditional forms and in kumite. I came in 3rd place with his bo form almost tied with the second place kid. He's devoted much more time to his traditional karate since the Christmas break and I couldn't be much happier with the delivery of his bo form with the kind of practice time (only one hour a week) he was able to put into it.

As for his traditional form, he came in fifth place out of 11. It's as per my calculations since they only gave out trophies and medals to the top 4 finishers. This is where my "bickering" comes. The top four finishers were all kids who are either part of the "sports & school" program, where they condensed regular classes in order to allow the kids the chance to train four afternoons in the week, or to kids who are part of the heavy competition rotation (about once a week, or 3 out of 4). The "sports & school" program means that these kids get to train in karate for about 3 hours a day, four days a week. Other than regular training, these kids are also regularly competing on a regional and provincial level.

If the goal is to give a chance to kids who don't usually compete, well it was not met in that class. I talked about it to my weeknight instructor on the following Monday. He happens to be part owner of the school with his wife (thus also in charge of the satellite school program). He told me he'd heard the same kind of comment not only from other parents but even from some instructors who were acting as officials during the competition and that they would probably change the format next year.

Anyway, it was a nice day, sadly ending with Andrew losing his only fight in kumite and hurting his ego in the process. Tears of sadness flowed down his cheeks, poor kid. Still, I reinforced in him the fact that he presented two strong forms and only because of that, I was immensely proud of him.

Funny thing happened as I was watching Andrew warm up about 30 minutes before the start of the day. My weeknight instructor walked by me, wearing his dark red "official" t-shirt, and he asked me "so Steve, you gonna officiate with us next year?". hehehe, all the officials for the tournament, all 20 of them (four rings, five officials per ring) were all black belt, you get it? I thought it was a nice wink on his part. :)

FM

PS: I have videos of his two forms but I have yet to transfer them from mini-DV to the computer. I'll eventually get to it...

sooooo, what's up doc?

2007-05-10T11:57:00.000-04:00

Man, what's this thing I got here? a blog? Hrm, what's that again? Oh, yeah, right? I used to post about my training here, and sometimes my son's training and learning... Now I remember...

hehe...

Sorry for the lack of updates, I've been kinda, sorta busy in real life, but more than anything, I kinda, sorta needed to get away from the posting, didn't feel like it. Oh sure, I relayed the information to my good friend TK, because she's always online to chat (wave hand, hi TK!), or to Mat and Mrx, because they harrased me via email (not really true, I was proud and happy to chat with 'em) but never felt like posting a formal thing on here. Again, I sometimes see this blog as too formal. I want every post to be perfect, so I end up posting nothing, heh. I'm strange like that...

Anyway, there'll be a few posts in the next few days, maybe all coming today, about a bunch of things that have happened lately in my (our) karate life. Interesting stuff, at least to me. Hope you'll like them too...

See you soon...

FM

Go get 'em son!

2007-04-11T12:58:00.000-04:00

Ayup, takes some big news to bring me back to posting it seems. And this once, the big news isn't about me but about Andrew. My boy has been picked to test for his third kyu on April 26th. Go Andrew!!!!

The week after I passed my 2nd kyu (which was also a third kyu or brown belt test), we'd been told that another brown would come "soon". That was back in mid February. Since then, I'd heard good comments about Andrew, that he was working hard, that he knew all his techniques to test, that his katas were coming along nicely, so much so that it crept to the back of my mind that he could be getting close to testing. Because of that, I gotta say I was not completely surprised yesterday when I heard his name being called, even though, I didn't really expect it either. :)

When he last tested, for his 4th kyu (brown stripe on his green belt) back in December, he'd been told that his testing had been delayed because he wasn't chambering his fists at the hip when punching and had a bit of a case of lazy stances (forward and horse stances mainly). He had in fact tested way later than most of his friends of the same level, with whom he's been going to class for a long while. That had not seem to bother him much at the time and I've never put any pressure on him to achieve anything as far as belt progression goes, as long as he puts the effort in every class he goes to. And effort, it seems he's been putting it since the Christmas break and now it's paying off. I remarked to him yesterday that this time around, he was the first of his friend to be picked to test. That just shows me, and him, how hard he's worked.

That brown belt has a little magic in it, it comes with a black stripe on it. I remember when I got mine, almost a year and a half ago, he went all "woah dad, black stripe means black belt is the next big step" and now he's the one thinking about testing for that same brown belt. Needless to say I'm very proud of my boy. :)

If there's only one little thing that bothers me with that test, it's the timing of it. April 26th is only two days before the big competition that is the Quebec Open, the biggest competition in the area, arguably one of the bigger ones in the Country and one of the big ones in North America. Getting that brown belt on the 26th will have him move from the intermediate to advanced underbelt class, being the lowest ranked brown belt. Advanced is brown belt only, but you can spend anywhere from 1.5 to 2+ years with your brown belt. There's no arguing that a kid who just got his brown belt is nowhere close to where a kid who's had it for 2 years and his a month away from testing for his black belt would be. Sure this kind of thing happens in other categories but the advanced class is the roughest of the underbelt categories. In lower classes, there's a real difference in color between the belts, i.e. intermediate is blue/blue with green stripe/green/green with brown stripe, while brown is brown with either one, two or three black stripes. Still and again, you can spend a full year with only one stripe (symbol of being a 3rd kyu) before testing for your 2nd kyu, just like I did. There was a world of difference between the Steve of January 2005, right after I passed my 3rd kyu, and the Steve of January 2006, right before I was to test for my 2nd kyu. The one good thing I'm seeing in Andrew is that he's turned his focus from going to karate in order to get ready for a competition to simply going to better himself, paying more attention to what the instructor is showing. Almost every week in the car on the ride back, he would answer my questions about what he'd worked on with some new self defense techniques he'd learned while before he was sometimes a little vague, kind of a sign that he was not always paying full attention. This has definitely changed...

That being said, him being in a tougher competition class becomes kind of secondary. I think he'll just be too proud of that brown belt achievement to ask for a delay so he can compete in a lower class. :)

And how's daddy doing on his side of things?

Very well thank you. In fact, I'd almost say extremely well. I like how I'm progressing within the art, how I see things now that I didn't see before. I like how I'm not so flustered when put into a situation of improvised self-defense. I like how more natural my katas seem to flow.

Am I perfect? God knows I'm not, and even better, I know it too. But I'm progressing and what's more, I'm enjoying it.

Would I be ready to test for a black belt now? I don't think so, but as I have been told, one never really thinks he/she is ready for a black belt test until it's over. Last I heard, the black belt test was set for May 26 and anybody selected to take it would have to take their 1st kyu test (aka black belt pre-test) prior to it. Given the fact that these 1st kyu test are usually one month prior to the black belt test, that would give me very little time to put the finishing touches to my training. I know my cat 3 kata is ready, my club and open hand self defense techniques are all coming out quite good and my freestyle self defense is better than it's ever been.
I'm just thinking out loud here though, nobody has approached me and told me to be ready for the test, I just happen to realize that I'm getting closer. And as I said in this post, my Monday instructor's atttitude is giving me (possibly false) signals that he looks like he expects me to be ready. I get this feeling he speaks directly to me whenever he asks us to go and work on some randori, and the little corrections he now gives me on Cat 3 are now the very subtle ones (i.e. more twists of the hips, more snap of the fist to the hip, in the blocks, the punches, etc...).

One thing I still need to work on is Sushi no kon sho, the bo kata. I know it, but it's still kind of robotic. But the moment I decide to really get myself into it, I know I will put it together and nail it after a while. I guess that's just being self confident...

I hope I'm not coming off as too cocky, I simply like how it's going on right now. I'm in maybe the best shape I've been in the last couple of years and while this may not say much compared to other youngsters in our classes, I can feel it when our instructors push us. When I could only do 12 pop-corn jumps while others did the whole 15, now I can do the 15 with everybody else. While I had a hard time holding the second 30 seconds sesion with my feet six inches off the floor while on my back, now I can do two and three sessions, interspersed with crunches or situps. I feel good.

Training, training, training is the word of the moment.
Fun, fun, fun is the feeling of the moment.
Be ready for anything is the attitude...

FM

Martial arts inspired comics

2007-03-23T12:38:00.000-04:00

Seeing how I really got to enjoy watching the NBC show Heroes, I just got interested in checking out comic books, or graphic novels as they're often referred to nowadays.

I've never really read any of the common superheroes books (i.e. Spider-man, Superman, X-men and the likes) when I was young but the way that Heroes show depicts ordinary people with extraordinary abilities had me looking for more of the same.

I found more than a few and will be happy to share them if you want to hear about it, but this searching through comics also led me to a few martial arts one.

I have decided to read only one for now, a webcomic called No Need for Bushido. It's been going on for a long while and I've just started reading it. It's pretty funny with some swordfighting in there, check it out.

Another one that I want to get to someday is a series called Blade of the Immortal. It's a manga (i.e. Japanese for comics and print cartoons) style comic but looking at some previews, I found that the drawing was less cartoonish with big eyes than your usual Japanese mangas. I like the background story for the main character, basically the setup for the whole series: "Manji, a ronin warrior of feudal Japan, has been cursed with immortality. To rid himself of this curse and end his life of misery, he must slay one thousand evil men! His quest begins when a young girl seeks his help in taking revenge on her parents' killers...and his quest won't end until the blood of a thousand has been spilled."

I'm not a fan of manga comics that read right-to-left but this one is translated from Japanese by the publisher and put into a more North American setup of left-to-right reading by using some cutting and pasting of the panels. The series has been going on since 1996 and there are tons of trade paperbacks who usually collects five 32 pages issues in one book for cheaper reading.

Are there any martial arts inspired comics that you read? If so, share theme in the comments, I'd be interested in checking them out...

And yeah, I know I'm still a little kid. ;)

FM

Sir, you are making me nervous

2007-03-22T12:56:00.000-04:00

Was a good, borderline great class last night. Not so much in the whole of what we did but just how it's going.

Warmups then worked on kicks and I felt good with them. My sidekicks, while not super high, are coming into form more and more, as do my back kicks.

We then worked a bit on a simple strike/block drill. Nothing super special, two by two, one attacking the other with various strikes and you just had to block the first strike and counter with one punch, just that, one punch. The rapid sequence at which we went was great to help me see and decipher what's coming and simply get out of the fire.

We then kept on working by doing the strike/block sequence but also adding one lock to end the attack. I'm feeling better and better with how how I can see the attackers hand once I've blocked the first strike and get back to it to grab and lock it. Still much work is needed.

We then were sent to practice on our own with my group of three higher brown belts to work on Cat 3. I was the only one who knew it all so I kind of led the way and helped the other two in filling in some blanks they had with it. I'm feeling better and better with that kata. I remember when I presented it in competition and even a bit afterward, I kept having to think a whole lot during it. Now, it's coming a bit more naturally. Still need to work on the back kicks, gotta stop losing my balance, but it's much better now than it was only a couple months ago. Our instructor had us present it to him just as class was ending. I punched with the wrong hand and one point in the kata but otherwise, I felt it went pretty well and that was also his comment about it. He told me that technically, my interpretation of the kata is sound and sincere although I still look like I'm thinking during a couple of tiny sequences. He really liked my double kick that happens toward the end. He always likes to put the emphasis on the fact that the double kick should be linear, more horizontal than vertical and he told me he thought I nailed that aspect of it during my kata last night. That was a huge ego booster.

Class was done just after my kata so we kneeled down and meditated and he talked to us a bit. He went on talking generally to "those of you getting close to the black belt" all the while looking in my direction. Sure there was another 2nd kyu next to me, but I felt like he was looking at me. ME??? Hold on there mister, I'm in no way, shape or form getting close to a black belt. Sure, closer today than I was yesterday, but never close enough.

On the other hand, will I ever be close enough, at least by my own standards? Probably not. And then, maybe he didn't mean anything more than "keep working on it, someday it'll be your turn". That's what I intend to do, keep on practicing for the fun of it...

FM

Stepping back

2007-03-21T15:01:00.000-04:00

Wow, it's almost been a month since my last post here. Have I stopped training? Nope, not at all, in fact I enjoy it just as much, if not more than before. I just ran into some weird self inflicted fears. The fear of not writing anyting important and the wanting to impress people too much with my posts.

I'll start posting again, but I'll try to keep most posts relatively short and most of the times without a big morale to them because frankly, I practice kenpo for my enjoyment, not to try to fulfill some big holes in my own self. :)

Anyway, training's not been very special lately, although I've found it to be very entertaining. We've worked on locks and throws a bit during almost every hour of class and I like that. We even did a "circle of love" drill, where people make a circle around one person and each of us attack him one after the other. I got out of it okay, feeling much better than I would have only a couple months ago.

The next few weeks might start getting tougher for our Saturdays as Andrew is supposed to start his soccer training camp on Saturdays.

My Monday evening class that was for advanced students has been merged with the intermediate class and is now one hour earlier. That bummed me a bit, since having a class full of brown belts was very nice. Not much I can do about it though. The silver lining is that with the class being from 7 to 8 now, I'll bring my bo and should be able to sneak in half an hour of practice until 8:30.

We had a snowstorm last Sunday and we didn't even venture ourselves outside the house. I'm making up for that class with a special appearance in tonight's class. :)

FM

At (rubber) gunpoint

2007-02-26T15:17:00.001-05:00

What would you do if a gun was held to your forehead? I can tell you what I would do. I'd probably shit in my pants. Heh...

We worked on some gun control techniques last Saturday. Good thing it was only a rubber gun or I guess I would have died a few times. Seriously, how many times will one have a gun pointed straight to his/her forehead or temple? I certainly hope it will never happen to me. These techniques are all cute and everything and would certainly be the very last recourse, but I at least got to work on some locks and takedowns.

That's probably the biggest thing I'm seeing in my karate practicing these days, the increasing ability to first deflect a blow, second find myself in a position to grab a wrist on a hand, and third be able to twist that wrist or hand in a way that will lock it, not simply give it a gentle handsake... It's still all at the very beginning of the learning curve, but at least I'm aware that it's there now. I see stuff, can visualize the lock or the takedown...

If you've learn the tiniest thing about me, you should know that any event can be good to teach a lesson. We had another good exemple of that during our lunch break on Saturday. About halfway through our one hour lunch break, a kid came walking down from the upstairs classroom. I figured he was from the beginners bo class as the other class was an advanced traditional one and he was an orange belt (out of white, yellow, orange...). After a few minutes, I see that he's sit down in the dressing room and seems pretty upset. As the good father that I am, I go and ask him if everything's all right. His only reply is "I hate my instructor". I asked him if there's a particular reason why he's feeling that way and he repeats that "I hate my instructor, just hate him". See this kid is maybe 12, but that's some childish behavior, the kind I don't see very often in Andrew anymore. Trying not to be rude, I ask him again and I get him to tell me that he cursed in the class and he says that his instructor told him to go to the dressing room.

Make a long story short, what I later learned is that he indeed cursed, one of the bad ones, in class. Instructor heard him and told he would not accept it and he told him to do 25 pushups. When the kid told him he could not (or would not, I'm unclear on that) the instructor agreed with him that he would do 25 situps instead. Now, when sitting down, the kid cursed again, maybe even directed it toward the instructor, which prompted the sending off. I had a good talk about it with Andrew. While I highly doubt that he would even curse in class as he's a very respectful kid, we also talked about the respect you owe to grown ups in general and to your leaders in the various activities you take a part in. Would that be your soccer coach, your karate instructor, or your teacher at school. You owe these people some respect. It's kinda sad that parents have a hard time teaching that to their kids nowadays...

FM

Randori

2007-02-20T12:42:00.000-05:00

Thanks Mat for giving a name to that thing I kept calling "free style kind of self-defense practice". Yep, randori it is, or at least it seems close enough to what we do. It's especially of the aikido kind that wikipedia talks about, in which "the attackers are not allowed to resist or attempt to counter the defender's techniques."

And yup, yesterday's class, only two days removed from the test, did include a good portion of it practicing randori. We concentrated first on footwork, to get out of the way, but also to position oneself to block and then counterattack and then control, with a lock. Was fun and I'm definitely looking forward to doing more of it...

We also spent some time on Cat 3 which is now the latest kata we have to make better. I do know it from start to finish, but there are tons of subtleties in it that I never saw and will have to master before it's even near being ready to present at a black belt test. That's how it is, keep training and someday you'll have learned something...

FM

Always expect the worst

2007-02-19T12:59:00.001-05:00

Yup, always go into something that makes you nervous thinking that it will be way,way tough. Once you're in it, it turns out not so bad usually...

Test went great, I'm now officially a second kyu in kenpo karate!

The day started with a class which I took more seriously than I told myself I would. I mean, I practiced hard and even though I'd told you I would take it easy on the cardio bit, I ended up working myself to a good sweat.

That class was a good wake up call though. We'd started reviewing our brown belt techniques, the 12 most advanced ones, kind of in order that we learned them, when a fellow more advanced brown belt who was with her kid offered to call them up for us. Not knowing we were working on advanced techniques before she got to us, she went and called a fairly basic one. All four of us practicing froze. While I was able to regain my composure when I realized I had to expect anything, my training partner had a brain freeze, a good one. For a couple more techniques, he looked at me blandly repeating "I don't remember anything, nothing is coming to me". I thought he was going to suffer a meltdown. I simply stayed calm with him and gave him simple hints to jig back his memory. He got back to it soon but was a bit freaked about the blank...

I had an hour and 15 minutes to kill between my class and that just was not enough to go back home so Andrew and I hate a sandwich as we usually do. There was no way I was going to go into that test without at least a little something in my stomach and Andrew had a bo class as per our usual schedule.

I was kinda surprised to see so many people show up as the time of the test was coming up. More and more people kept appearing, so much so that we ended up being 19 in the test. While three of them were kiddos who were testing for their blue belt or so, the rest was divided evenly in eight persons testing for 3rd kyu and eight more testing for 2nd kyu. To my knowledge, this was one of the biggest most advanced kind of test to have ever taken place at our school. Even more interesting, of the 16 more advanced candidate testing for 3rd or 2nd kyu, eight of us were adult candidates (4 for 3rd kyu, 4 for 2nd kyu). And I'm not even talking young adults, all of us over 30 (or very close to being 30) and even one fellow who's getting close to 60. Now you're talking!

Still, that left 8 kids full of energy and you know how it is, they have to burn them too, meaning burning us at the same time. I did sweat a lot, but I expected that. I'm not so sure my wife expected to see me with my face all red though. She came to pick Andrew up after his bo class, so it was about 45 minutes into our test, basically right at the end of the more cardio portion. I was indeed sweating like a pig and in between two reps, I saw her face in the hall. She looked genuinely concerned for my well being. :)

But I was fine and I survived that section first, then the one with self defense techniques, then we hit a wall with the free style self defense. The way our curriculum is build, more emphasis is put on pre-programmed (I'd even say almost choreographed) techniques up until you've received your 2nd kyu, so I knew that free style self defense (get attacked and defend yourself almost no matter how) would be a weak point. The test just confirmed it. The thing is, it pretty much confirmed it for everybody else too. If we got one good thing of that test, other than challenging ourselves to our limits, it's that our instructors acknowledged it and we should see more free style type of practice on our way to the black belt.

We finished the test with our katas. I felt mine went well. There was some sort of misunderstanding as to what was requried of us. For the last month or so, we practiced Cat 3 regularly in our classes even though we knew it was not required. What I had understood from my instructors was that if enough people had it, they would ask to see it. But then when the test came, our head instructor asked to see Sushi no kon sho, our bo kata, which we had not practiced in a little while. Not that I didn't want to practice it, but we were not really told to practice it by either of our two instructors. That was kind of odd. And frustrating, since I knew it quite well before the holiday break and with only a little practice, I would have been able to present it...

The test ended on a good, heartfelt word from our head instructor, a 5th dan lady. She told us that she was very proud of seeing such a big group of advanced belts like that. She added that while it will we will feel it as a great accomplishment to get a black belt, and we are getting ever closer she added, it will also be a great feeling for all of our instructors to see us graduate. She added that while plenty of people start as beginners every time they do an open house activity, not that many people grind it out all the way to the black belt...

Anyway, that was a good test. A test that leaves me a little sore, but not too much. Even bigger news is the fact that for the first time ever in any belt test, I did this test without a big brace on my right knee. I think I've explained in the past that I had injured my knee a couple years prior to taking on karate. I hyperextended it, leaving it a tiny bit unstable and wanting to bend sideways when I exercise and I'm really tired. Weak knee ligaments can usually be compensated for with a better control of the calf and thigh muscles, but when you get really tired, that control can tend to go out the window. That's the reason why I had always been nervous about tests. In classes, I usually wear a simple sleave. I thought about it long and hard and thought I'd try the test with only the sleave. The knee held superbly, no weakness in it at all. This was maybe my biggest win of the day. That, and that second black stripe on my brown belt. :)

FM

Today's the day

2007-02-17T09:26:00.000-05:00

This has been a somewhat frustrating week...

It all started on what should have been a nice almost semi-private class. There were only 5 of us in Monday's class. Furthermore, three of the five were set to test today, so our instructor decided that we'd go through our katas step by step. While some pointers helped me, at one point I almost felt depressed by how many "little" things I had to correct to make them perfect. It started to make me doubt that I was even ready to test. That stance there, that strike here, that move there, aaaaarrrrggggg! Information overload!!!!

I tagged along with Andrew on Tuesday and while there's usually not much room available on Tuesday nights, I was able to find a little corner and I practiced on my own. I was able to get my groove back, do my katas "by instinct", how I feel them and I thought they came out okay. That went a long way to put my mind at ease towards the test. I also went through my techniques, all 36 open hand ones and 15 club ones and I feel they are all coming out fine.

Then came Wednesday. I don't know how it was where you live, but here a storm started hitting us around supper time. I had planned to go take a class at 7, but I feared they could the road between the school and our house so I didn't chance it, skipping what would have been the last more intense class before the test. That bumme me out but oh well, what can I do?

Comes yesterday. My wife asked me if I was nervous. Quite honestly, not really. I mean, what's the worst that can happen? I know my stuff, know how to deliver that katas, I've tested them in competition. I only need to calm down and everything will come of itself.

I have class this morning but I will take it easy, mostly using it to review everything and make sure there are no glaring holes anywhere...

Wish me luck.

FM

PS: how cool is it that this post, on the day of a test, is my 100th post on this blog... :)

Well, the couch won...

2007-02-12T15:17:00.000-05:00

They know when to push you, hard. Yep, instructors know. Last Saturday was our last Saturday of "real" class before the test. yeah, I say "real" class because while I (and many others) will be going to the class next Saturday morning, the day of the test, I will not push myself super hard during the cardio portion of it. I'll use that class to mostly review my stuff and warm myself up a bit for the test coming up in the afternoon.

So, with this in mind and seeing how many of the people in class will be on the test next week, our instructor gave us a preview of said test, not that we didn't know what would be coming our way. ;) It all started with a good aerobic warmup. As part of the end of that warmup, he told us to do a stationary jog and be on the ready. He started calling KC's, but kept telling us to keep on jogging in between each of them. Once the 20 KC's had been reviewed, 50 jumping jacks, then we got to self defense techniques. Aspiring brown belts (or 4th kyu testing for their 3rd) need to know 24 while my group (3rd kyu testing for their 2nd kyu) need to know 36 of them. We kept doing them, always going back to stationary jog in between. When we got to the last 12, the aspiring brown belts were asked to keep on doing their 12 highest ones. I'm happy to report that I felt good with them. They came and flowed pretty well with only very minor screw ups on my part.

Our instructor then paired us up two by two and we went to self defense techniques facing a club attack. Again, it went well. I could be a bit closer and I'll try to remember that for the upcoming week.

Then came katas, and that's when being tired, in a crowded room, facing in a different angle that we're used to hit me. Pinan 1 went well but pinan 2 was a disaster. I was out of synch and felt completely lost. I started with some moves of pinan 3, continued with some of pinan 2 and then finished with some more of pinan 3. Seriously, it was not pretty. The good news is that I know why it happened. I was just not focused on what I was doing. I caught a reflexion of myself in one of the mirror just as I started and instead of concentrating on what I was doing, I looked at the reflexion. The even better news is that I acknowledged that it was a screw up and was able to put it in the back of my mind and simply forget it. When our instructor asked us to go with the pinan 3, I nailed it. We kept on going, Circle of the Tiger, then Statue of the crane, then Cat 1, Cat 2, and even Cat 3 which is not a requirement of the 2nd kyu. I think I did them quite well and if I can do them that way on the test, I'll be very happy.

He'd had us do 25 crunches in between the Crane and the Cat 1 kata and we got back to some abs work after Cat 3 with that nice ab workout where, two by two, one person is laying on his back, head in between the ankles of the other person who's standing up facing toward the feet of the other person. The person on the floor then lifts his legs while the person standing up pushes them back down. We did 40 of those. I usually tend to die, not tire, die, at 25, but this time, I did the whole 40 reps. I'd say I'm ready to test. :)

I don't think I need to tell you that my 36 year old body was a tiny bit tired following that class. We got home at about 12:40 and had dinner then. The WKA competition was starting at 1pm and I wanted to go, after my parents were going to leave from visiting us. Only, I sat down, only for a few minutes on the couch to relax and watch some TV. Well, you guessed it, the couch won and KO'ed me. That nap sure did feel good though... :)

When I woke up, it was already passed 3pm and I didn't feel like going outside, so I passed on the WKA, too bad. But I felt rejuvenated by the nice workout and ensuing nap...

FM

Making the best of it

2007-02-09T15:30:00.000-05:00

Remember when I talked about Emilie Paquet and Elymaud Samson and how well they did at the WKA world Championships last November? well the cycle starts over again, meaning the Quebec qualifiers are coming up this Saturday and they will be in Lévis, maybe 3 minutes in car from where our school is.

Thing is, this time around our bo instructor is entering them and because of that, our bo class of this week as been pushed back to the end of our 12 weeks schedule.

Now I find myself with a free Saturday afternoon and I'm thinking, why wouldn't I recharge the batteries of the videocam and pay a little visit to that competition?

So this is what I think I'll do tomorrow afternoon. Competition starts at 1, our traditional class ends at 12:15. Enough time to grab a quick bite and head on out there.

I'll try to make some videos available to you next week. Hopefully I'll be able to catch our instructor in action...

FM

some pre-pre-pre-testing...

2007-02-08T15:27:00.000-05:00

...or "you're always being tested anyway".

That's how I go into most of my classes. Heck, it's how I live most of my life. There's alway somebody evaluating you. Be it in your work, or how you educate your children, there's always something putting a virtual score on what you do. The thing is, it's even mor prevalent when you get close to a belt test.

It's been over a year now since I passed my 3rd kyu so it's been a little while since the last we went into that pre-test mode, but I remember it clearly. 3rd kyu in our style is clearly where the intermediate vs advanced line is drawn. Not that I considered myself all that much more advanced after being handed a brown belt, but I trained quite hard for it and indeed felt like I had accomplished something. I'm getting that vibe again. Come February 17, not much will change other than I'll have a second black stripe on my brown belt, but I'm training with a renewed focus now.

The last couple of classes, Monday and Wednesday, have been expecially focused on the test requirements. From KCs to higher katas and self defense techniques on Monday and techniques again with some rolling yesterday. I'm starting to realize that quite a bit of what we do is based around aikido stuff. Not so much the curriculum stuff but the extra-curriculum one, like the locks I talked about in a previous post, shionage et sankyo. And now the rolling. We did some forward rolling, just like the Aikido Ferret is demonstrating here and also some backward rolling. Doesn't look like much but when you think about it, rolling is a pretty good way to break a fall.

As for how things are coming, I felt good about it yesterday, real good actually. The curriculum self defense techniques are pretty much all coming out without thinking about it and I like that.

Andrew update

Marc (MrX) was aking about Andrew in a comment on my most recent post. Andrew is doing well, quite well actually. The regular schedule for him would be traditional classes on Tuesday, Friday and Saturday, but for some reason, he's missed one per week the last couple of weeks. He's also been having class with the owner of our school, Dgina, a 5th dan who's very good with kids. Funny story from last Friday. As I got to pick him up after his class, he came walking and she was walking behind him, telling me over his shoulder that he was a lucky fellow that day. Apparently, there was an odd number of student and when they got to practice self defense techniques, she paired up with him. His beaming smile told me he had worked hard to impress her. When I asked her aloud how he'd done, she nodded telling me he knew just about everything he needs to know to test for 3rd kyu. He only needs a couple more self defense techniques against clubs and he'd have it all. Sure, there's a time limit to go through, but still I was impressed to hear her say that. The most pride came just when he went downstairs to change in the dressing room. She added in a whisper, so I'd be the only one to hear: "he's growing, maturing, your big boy". Yeah, he is growing. We see it everyday but it's always nice to hear. Sure makes a daddy proud. :)

He too won't be competing this weekend. I asked him if he wanted to, that I would support him and go cheer for him, but he said he didn't feel like it. I figured if he can keep on enjoying the karate, the competition is not necessary. He also seems to enjoy practicing with his bo once a week. I can't ask for much more from him to be honest...

Speaking of bo class, I'll be out of it for a couple of weeks. This Saturday, our instructor is competing in a big competition in Lévis so the class has been postponed to later and next Saturday, well, I'll be testing during the time of the class, so...

FM

stuff's happenin'

2007-02-05T15:22:00.000-05:00

Yep, it's not because I'm not posting that I'm not training and that stuff isn'T happening, so here goes with a hodgepodge (my new favorite word) of karate stuff...

Let him pick a side

Knowing that February was coming fast and with it, supposedly a test, I asked my wife to be home on time on Wednesday so I could jam in an extra hour of class. She did make it and that class was nice, even better than most Wednesday night class in that it wasn't too crowded. We worked on punches for a little while to warmup then went on to work on locks, namely shionage and sankyo.

Quite honestly, I felt god with the two of them, better than I expected. Facing either a lapel grab, a hook punch or a direct punch, I was usually able to block/deflect the punch or get out of the grab and then put myself in position to follow it with either of the two locks. That was a feel good moment.

we ended by working on the locks out of a crossed wrist grab. Imagine an attacker grabing your right wrist with his right hand, a bit as if he was shaking your hand. Thats where we the one playing the attacker had to pick a side, either pull to his right, or to his left. Depending on which side he takes, shionage or sankyo comes just naturally. No need to think about what the name of the lock is, or to fight his pull, just let him pull and go with the lock. He pulls to his right, my left, it's sankyo. To his left, my right, it's shionage. Realizing I was able to simply do it, without even thinking, was another feel good moment.

So February as started

So yeah, we get to Saturday morning and the first thing our instructor tells us, in the middle of the warmup session, is that the test date has been set for February 17. I guess I feel good about that date. I mean, could I use more time to get ready? Well, who wouldn't? Still, I feel like stuff is coming along nicely and that I will be ready, or at least, I won't be doing much worse than any other 3rd kyu who will be on that test. You know, it's not that I compare myself with others so much, but you never want to be the one doing the most mistakes in a test...

That class was a good one though and it actually is the main reason why I'm saying I should be ready for that test. After doing some stance drills, we paired up to work on our self defense techniques. Our instructor asked us to do facing both a right (the more natural one) and a left handed attack. My partner and I decided to do them one by one, right then left and as such were going through them a bit slower than other paires who did all techniques right handed and then left handed. At one point, when we heard the other two pairs calling much higher techniques than the one we were working on, she told me something along the lines of "woah, we're slow". I didn't care much and told her we were learning to work them properly. When we got to the end however, we finished about 3-4 minutes before the other pairs, as it became obvious to us that they were finishing their left handed versions of the techniques.

Quitre honestly, the techniques were coming and flowing quite well. I was very happy with how it went. Two more weeks like that and I'm sure we'll be good to go.

Sad not to compete, but...

Yeah, not competing in the upcoming Levisien Open is kinda sad, but I've discovered that I've started enjoying "playing" with my bo so much more. While there's something to be said about having a bit of pressure to spice things up, too much of it is never a good thing. Without having to think about a competition coming up, I get to experiment stuff, try learning that new trick I saw, finally simply enjoy the escape of practicing with the bo. I practice martial arts for myself, to evade from the everyday stress. There's no need in making myself nervous about it. There's that, and as you know, the lack of practice time.

FM

Blows...

2007-01-29T15:22:00.000-05:00

The last week has been one of suffering blows, physically, although pretty minor, and figuratively.

It all started last Monday. After warmup, we did about 35 minutes out of the hour on revising stuff we knew like katas, self defense techniques and KC's. That part went fairly well. I drew a couple of tiny blanks on some mid-level and advanced techniques but otherwise, it went well. We finished the last 10-15 minutes doing some freestyle selfdefense two by two, i.e. one attack the other without telling in advance and you need to defend with something different every time.

I was paired with a 4th kyu student while the class is usually only 3rd kyu and up. It went well for a while even though the guy was freezing a bit when defending and sometimes not controlling all of his strike. First came a shot to the solar plexus that made me go "ow!". Nothing to break bones, but a good reminder to watch for myself. I guess I didn't watch enough since only a few minutes later, he got in close and pulled up a ridge hand that should have been stopped short but wasn't and he hit me in the jewels. ow ow ow ow ow!!! I did tell him to control his strikes, loud enough that our instructor came to see and talked to him with tricks on how to gauge the distance. It wasn't bad, as in I didn't get any black and blue but it really was not a pleasant experience.

As much as you don't want this to happen, it's bound to happen. Strikes will touch hard and injuries can happen. I spoke up to him only to make him understand it was not the first time (because it's happen more with him than other people with whom I practice way more often) and that I felt he neede to work on his control.

Then the next day came the figurative blow. Looking at the schedule, I saw that there was a semi-private traditional class for adults during Andrew's traditional class. I was pretty sure there was room for me in that class and was bout to enquire about it right after Andrew's class would end. Little did I know, they have decided to move that class to Monday night, at the same time as my own Monday nights class. Heh, so much for trying to make something out of the driving Andrew around... I would offer my service to suit up and help Andrew's instructor in his class, but that's a 4th kyu and up class and since I'm only 3rd kyu, some/many kids would be higher in grade than me and I think I would feel more inadequate than anything else...

Finally came Saturday. The morning traditional class went well. Lots of work done again on self defense techniques and katas and KC's and yay, no blows in that class. :)

The afternoon was different however. It was the first bo class of the new session. I have pretty much given up on the idea of competing in February and I have found that this thought has kind of made me enjoy my bo more. The class was cool and I got to work on techniques and new moves without putting pressure on myself. Our instructor gave all of us a challenge, a different one for different people. My challenge was to spin the bo around my wrist, similar to what I do in my kata (right before the throw) but this time over my head and then throw it in a horizontal rotation. I had tried it before and had missed badly. He told me to work on it and I went to work. Well, that'S when the third blow of the week came. At one point, I was getting better and better and I tried applying a bit more speed to my bo. Bad idea. The thing swirled and hit me on the lip, leading to a nick on the inside of the lip from hitting my tooth. Not bad, no stitches needed, still not pleasant. I kept on practicing and even was asked to try it while lying on my back. Try to picture this: me at about 200 lbs, on my back spinning my bo, then throwing it copter style from my right to my left hand. I was getting pretty good by the end of class and never hit my head again. His way of thinking when asking us to work on stuff like that is that if you do a spin thing that's way tougher than your usual, when you'll go back to your regular thing, it'll simply seem so much easier. I kind of agree...

FM

Lack of updates

2007-01-22T15:16:00.000-05:00

Sorry everyone, a few not so special circumstances have led to me not posting so much lately. By "not so special" I mean simply that work has been a bit hectic and that well, there's not much new to report.

It's been mostly working on already known stuff in order to be ready for the belt test whenever it comes. I'm feeling better about it with every hour of class that I have. There are always little things here and there, well everywhere, but we'll get around to them with time.

The whole new schedule we're going with since the new year is bumming me a great deal though. Gone are the Wednesday night practice hours for me, there's no room for me to practice when Andrew takes his midweek class, now on Tuesday at the Dojo. Also, due to some reorganization of belt levels in classes, his Friday night class is now the one going from 8 to 9 and then again, there's no room for me to practice with my bo. These two lost hours have practically now reduced my bo practice to one hour a week, the group class we will have on Saturday afternoon.

These bo group classes start next Saturday which meant we had three free Saturday afternoons before they'd start. I had booked three semi private one hour long class for me and Andrew, alone with our instructor. As I posted earlier, we turned the first of these three into a free practice. The second hour was nice, with the instructor and all, but quite a bit intense in terms of stuff to correct. When in instructor is asking me to do my kata at half, or even quarter speed, and is stopping me 5 or 6 times with some more and more technical things to correct/change/improve, my head has a tendency to swell up. Not that I mind being corrected, I actually appreciate it and thought it was a great class, but I needed time to practice what I was being shown. And that time as kind of disappeared. Because of that, I asked our instructor to cancel the third hour of class and we turned it into another 30 minutes of free practice, me and my boy. We had some joyful moments in that practice. At the very end, I told Andrew that we'd do our kata 2-3 times and we'd go home so I take place and he is by my side. I could see him by the corner of my left eye as he lined up with me. I started my kata, concentrated on what I was doing but couldn't shake the feeling that I was being followed. I, well we got to the end of the kata and I turned to him and asked him: "you were trying to do it synchro weren't you?" Be smile a huge smile. We did it twice after that and it was indeed pretty cool to do the kata next to my son, in almost synchronized fashion. :)

Finally, With this new schedule, as well as the test coming up and my wanting to concentrate a bit more on learning, I'm putting in question my participation to the Levisien Open on February 11. No final decision has been take, but it'S quite possible that I won't do it and hold on until the Quebec Open, scheduled for the end of April.

FM

ranking and helping out others

2007-01-09T12:55:00.000-05:00

Had class yesterday, a good, get back into the groove kind of class. Prior to it happened something that I just made my day. As I settled to the floor near one corner of the room to stretch a little, as I usually like to do prior to the start of my class in which we will stretch anyway, I saw a purple belt practicing with a white belt maybe 5-8 feet away, looking to me with an inquisitive eye. Turned out the instructor was helping out at the other end of the room and they needed some help of their own on an intermediate self defense technique. The purple belt, a young man (maybe 20yo) actually asked me very politely if I could help them sort out the sequence of moves in a couple of techniques. That might be silly, but I felt very good being asked to help and did help them to the best of my knowledge. They certainly seemed to appreciate it.

This is one thing that's quite particular to martial arts, you wear your rank. I don't boast about it and would neverput down a "lower" ranked belt on something he would say to me just because I'm a "higher" ranked belt. I just hit me that the more I see other adults coming up through the ranks, the more I sometimes see them looking at me with somewhat different eyes. Maybe it's all in my head, but I remember seeing the brown belts when I first got to practice with some of them when I was a purple belt and I was impressed by how they moved and would look up to them for any tip or hint they could give me to improve my technique. Now if I can give back that little bit to someone else, to the extent of what I certain of, meaning that I don't give false advice leadning others down a wrong path, I'll try to do it. I also realize that this means I am far from done from learning. I have to listen even more closely to what my instuctor tells me, practice harder, if I want to be a better exemple, a better "teacher"...

I think that from now on, whenever I'll have a chance to on these Mondays, I'll try to get to the dojo a bit more ahead of time. Don't want to impose myself, but if I can help anybody improve, that will only make me a better martial artist... Even better, if there's no need for my help, there is some available space in the room next door, and in that case, I'll practice on my own. That should definitely make me a better martial artist.

FM

There will be 28 days in February

2007-01-08T12:49:00.000-05:00

First things first, let me wish you all a very happy new year, if only a bit late. May 2007 be healthy more than anything else. Seems the more I grow up, the more I seem to hear about people getting ill left and right and the more I realize that our good health is something we often underappreciate and take for granted. With good health, everything else comes together fine, be it happiness, prosperity or just about anything else, really...

As for our karate life, well, I have not posted since Christmas day because well, there was not much to post about. I did not practice once over the holiday season but I feel it was a good break. It allowed me to heal whatever was bugging me in my left shoulder and I feel new and rested, although a bit bloated, even though I didn't overindulge in food too much. Okay, okay, maybe once or twice, but not too much. :)

We had our first class back last Saturday. It went well, mostly reviewing what we knew before the long break. Say what you will, the human brain is made to forget, although I felt pretty good with how it went. I had no real blanks on my forms and was even able to do Cat 3 fairly confidently. We did learn something before the class had even started. On one of the 28 days of February, there will be a test for 2nd kyu for those of us at first kyu. We'd heard it would be after the holiday break but to get some sort of confirmation that we will have January to get our body back into shape and get our mind to top speed was nice. I will be ready for that test, whenever they say that the time has come.

We were supposed to have a semi-private bo class in the afternoon but when our instructor failed to show up some 5-10 minutes after the supposed start time of our class and we called him, we learned that he was still sleeping and his groggy voice told us he was sick (although he admitted having completely forgotten about the class). He lives some 25 minutes away from the school so we told him not to bother and Andrew and I ended up practicing on our own for 25 minutes. I actually was not too mad to not have that class as I was more looking forward to getting some free practice time more than being scrutinized by one instructor on our first day back. That way, we got to get reacquainted with our bos without having to pay for a private instructor.

Surprisingly, I did not feel as sore on Sunday, or today, as I thought I would, even though our instructor took us through the squat on tiptoe routine and had us do a good bit of abs work. Glad to be back too...

FM

Merry Christmas to all of you

2006-12-25T17:04:00.000-05:00

I would like to wish a Merry Christmas to all of my regular readers (yeah, the four of you as I usually joke ;) ) and to anyone who might stumble upon this page today.

Here's hoping you're having a great time, I know we are around here. Was a nice Christmas dinner at my parents' last night after which we got to unwrap the presents. Watching the kids smile when they see presents they had either asked for (so were happy to see them) or were not expecting but were really happy to see is always a great source of joy for me.

Just so this post as a tiny bit of karate in it, let me say that I received the DVD of Jet Li's Fearless. I can't wait to watch it. :)

Have fun you all, be safe and don't drink and drive.

FM

kali on a knuckle = ouch

2006-12-21T15:19:00.000-05:00

I was able to attend yesterday's class and as advertised by the instructor, we worked on some kali routines. I'm starting to like that weapon. Even though it's basically a wood stick, strikes are flowing a bit as if you're holding a sword, or at least a long bladed kind of weapon.

We did some basic strikes and blocks at first and finished the class with a drill of five moves that can start over as soon as the last strike is by simply reverting the roles, i.e. the attacker becomes the attackee. With somebody swinging a stick to your head, things can get a bit confusing so we were keeping it on the slow motion side but even then, I got wacked on my first knuckle of my right hand at one point. It's all blue/redish right now, and even though it is far from broken, it is very tender to the touch but I'll have plenty of time to let it rest.

That was my last class of 2006 since the dojo will be closing on Friday and will only reopen on January 6. As I said before, I kind of welcome the break as it will give me a chance to change my mind a bit, get out of the routine. Not that I don't like taking class, but when you're always running, either to be on time for my classes or for Andrew's classes, it'll be nice to not have to worry about anything for a couple of weeks. And that's not counting the fact that I also get off work on Friday at 4:15 and will not come back until January 8. Talk about having time to pull the plug on everything and really not worry about anything but rest... :)

I'll certainly post something in the break, if only to share some more video from the DVD of that Christmas show...

FM

A private review

2006-12-19T12:47:00.000-05:00

I've talked about how I like my Monday evening class because it's the perfect size (about 9 to 12 student per class) with the prefect kind of students, i.e. mostly sutdent that are exactly my rank or a bit above. Well yesterday evening was even better than usual. Maybe due to the upcoming holiday season and also the fact that some student of our school might have gone South for a week (a trip to Disney World had been organized by the school's owners and people could buy tickets to go, sadly I couldn't afford four tickets), we were only three students in class yesterday. Yep, only three students, me, another brown belt who got his 3rd kyu with me a year ago, and a recent black belt graduate. This meant we had the instructor in a very private kind of class.

He took us through some kata work first. We did some work with some kata we don't often do, liek the Statue of the Crane. I was happy with how they all came out.

After kata work, we got to work on self defense techniques, nothing new, only reviewing what we already knew. Again, I thought my techniques came out okay with no major glitches. Yeah, a couple tiny missteps happened here or there, but otherwise, I knew them all and they were coming out fairly quick and efficiently.

We finished the class with some self defense against club attacks. One after the other, one student was put in between the other two who attacked him one after the other. Again, I thought it went fairly well. Had they told me the test was this coming saturday, I think I could have been ready, so I guess that with a couple weeks of headsup in January, I should be able to get to the test with confidence in what I can do.

I've talked about how inconvenient the closing of the Wednesday night special will be, but I just found a silver lining. By me having to drive Andrew to his Wednesday night class, this used to keep me from attending the other advanced adult class that is taking place at the dojo. Now, with moving Andrew's midweek class to Tuesday, albeit at the dojo, this leaves my Wednesday night free to take a real class instead of simply training on my own. Even better for this week, my curiosity was piqued when I learned that the person who would be giving class is the same instructor who's given us some traditional bo sparring class in the past and that this is probably the kind of class he might give this coming Wednesday. Hmmmm, maybe I'll try to squeeze in this one extra hour of class this week...

FM

Quiet weekend before the long break

2006-12-18T15:16:00.000-05:00

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

So proud...

2006-12-15T15:19:00.000-05:00

Yeah, he looked so proud as I saw him coming my way, wearing his green belt now with a taped brown stripe at both ends. But you know what, the title could have applied to his daddy too. I was and will always be really proud of my boys. They bring such joy into our lives, it just can't be described.

Anyway, my monday evening instructor was the main tester last night and when he got to the front desk to get the brown tape, he flashed me the thumbs up sign with a good sized smile. He simply added something along the lines of "it went real well, he knew his stuff". While he also said that he had a couple of instances of the fist wanting to stay in front, he said it wasn't that bad.

I feel that Andrew has begun to learn that hard work does pay off. I can see that in his talking and his behaviour. About his school report card, which was very good, to this belt test, he is beginning to realize that he can't simply coast on talent alone. That's good, I like that he's growing, but darn it, he's growing too fast. Oh well.

One other thing I think he has learned is that this fist thing will need to be worked on from now on, if simply so that it doesn't come back to haunt him as he starts getting to the more important belt tests. Not saying the previous belt tests were not important, but from my importance, when I got my brown belt (3rd kyu and the next belt he will test for), I really felt like I had stepped up a notch. Maybe it's got to do with the fact that in adult classes, brown belts are supposed to take the "advanced" classes, or the fact that our brown belt comes with a black stripe, signal that if you keep on working hard, maybe someday you can get to that black belt. One thing I know he realized yesterday is that a brown stripe to his green belt is the final link to said brown belt which is kinda close to the black belt.

Yesterday, he seemed more motivated than ever to keep on practicing. Reminded me of about a year ago, right after I got my brown belt, we had a little talk in which, for the first time, he mentionned something about the black belt. We got to talking about Matthew his little brother and if he thought he would like to do karate or not. I told Andrew that maybe he would, but that he was still a good two years from even getting signed up (will turn 4 in January 2008). I had asked Andrew if he thought he'd still be practicing karate by then and he replied, with a smile in his eyes, that yeah he would, because he wanted to get a black belt... Andrew was 8 at the time, and I'm pretty sure he can't see when he would test for a black belt, yet, he sees it in his future... That was another moment of pride for daddy. :)

All these talks of a future black belt are not to say that this is our only goal. I'm sure parents reading my blog here will relate to how hard it can be to motivate a kid to keep on practicing, especially when belt tests are getting few and far between. An adult can rationalize, or at least some adult can. ;) For a kid, it's harder. To see my boy's fire being rekindled like that, it just felt nice to him maturing and made me realize how much he's grown lately.

In all the good news about the test, I forgot to talk about one little inconvenient news we got on Wednesday evening. That was the last class of the Fall session at that location, a gym in a school very close to our house. Sadly, we also learned that it was the last class that will be held at that location, EVER. Turned out that while there used to be two hours of class, each of them attended by 12-14 kids, this Fall, it had dropped to only one hour with at the most 13 kids and sometimes only 9-10. Our karate school just couldn't justify having to pay the rental fee charged by the school board and they have decided to not offer satellite classes in that gymnasium in January. As I said, this is an inconvenient news. I had come to like the closeness of the place as it allowed Andrew to have one hour of class in the week maybe only 2 minutes away from home instead of the usual 10-15 minutes that it takes us to get to the dojo. Doesn't seem much but with homeworks and such weeknight free time sometimes come at a premium. Right now, Andrew was taking three hours a week, the other two being Fridays and Saturday mornings. His subscription 48 weeks, twice a week, but we usually take it easy during the Summer months, so we'd been putting time "in the bank" so the speak. We could simply keep on going twice a week (Friday and Saturday) or find another evening in the week. I took a quick look at the school's kid schedule for his belt level and I think I saw an opening at 7 on Tuesday which could fit quite well. Before 7 gives us plenty of time to do homeworks and lessons, and even giving my wife a bit more time to get home. I gotta say that the 6pm time for the Wednesday evening was cutting it close.

The other inconvenient thing about this news is that I lose my free hour of practice. As you've read in the past, I used that hour mainly to practice my bo and sometimes to practice my kata. That, combined with the fact that come January, Andrew will switch from the 7pm to the 8pm traditional class on Fridays (due to his new belt and some rearrangement of belts for a better split of size in classes) and there's not much room available in that time slot at the dojo as opposed to the 7pm slot, where I can usually find a little spot to practice in. Maybe I'll simply drop to only going to the regular Saturday afternoon class with a couple private classes for me every once in a while. I guess we'll see when we get there...

FM

Go get 'em kid!

2006-12-14T12:44:00.000-05:00

There had been talks that Andrew was getting close to testing for his 4th kyu (a brown stripe on his green belt). Well it got confirmed yesterday. Go Andrew!

The way he learned about it was kind of dramatic though. A couple of weeks ago, I had a tiny talk with Dgina, the head of our school, simply asking her how she thought Andrew was doing. Since she gives kids class on Mondays and Tuesdays at the dojo exclusively, Andrew almost never has her for instructor, but while Stephane, his regular instructor, was in Spain for the World Championship, she was Andrew's replacement instructor for a couple of weeks. She had then told me that Andrew had not been placed on any of the November tests for one particular reason. Even though he knew all of his curriculum for his 4th kyu, he apparently had developed the bad habit of not always chambering his fists at the hip when striking, and he had also started not improved his stances enough (forward stance and horse stance in particular). The stances I knew about it and we've been reminding him about it in particular in his bo classes, but the chambering of his fists, I had no clue about it, since I don't really pay attention to his traditional classes (I'm usually taking a class myself, or I'm training at the same time). It wasn't really evident in his main kata, Circle of the Tiger, because he almsot always performs it with a competition mindset, so he usually pays attention to everything then.

Anyway, she had then told me that they had issued a challenge to him to get better by December 14, the date of the last test before the xmas break.

I realized last Wednesday that December 14 was coming fast, so after his private class, I made a deal with his Wednesday night instructor (Stephane) that if he planned to put him on the test, we would have Andrew take a private class on Wednesday the 13th, to get him ready for the test. He assured him that I didn't want to pressure him to put Andrew on the test but if they didn't he was ready, we simply wouldn't have him take a private class and we'd wait until whenever would have been the time in January to have that private class. He agreed with the idea and told me he would give me an answer by Saturday morning.

Came Saturday morning. Stephane came to see me during my class, telling me that he would put Andrew on the test, but would only tell him on Wednesday. That was fine by me. Yesterday during dinner prior to the class, I told Andrew that it was still possible that Stephane would give him his card for the test and that if so, it would probably be a good idea to stay for an extra half hour of private class. He went along with the idea and seemed to be thinking that the private class was a good idea, if a test was forthcoming.

Got to class, I trained on my things, they did their own things. End of class came, still no card. Stephane dismisses class and Andrew starts taking his belt off, turning back to me at the back of the room. He didn't really look disappointed or anything. Stephane turned to me and Andrew and I made a quick head nod, mouthing "he knows nothing yet". Stephane caught my nod immediately and turned to Andrew and told him "you stay with me for a half hour and if you show me you have improved enough, you'll get your card for tomorrow". I turned to Andrew presented him a high five while telling him to give it all he got, to go at it as if that were the test. I saw fire in his eyes.

I left the room as I usually do when he's taking a private class and I came back 30 minutes later. First I saw as I walked in the gym was my Andrew skipping with the little cardboard piece indicating he was on the test. He had that huge smile on his face, a $1000 smile that gave me goosebumps. Stephane told me he had improved his stances and his fist chambering significantly and he had all the needed curriculum to test.

Go Nanou, go get 'em!

FM

PS: "Nanou" is how his little brother Matthew used to call him when he first started talking. Even though he's since corrected his way of saying his big brother's name, the Nanou way of saying it has affectively stuck for my wife and I. :)

finding peace

2006-12-11T21:58:00.001-05:00

Nope, I'm not talking about peace in the world, simply peace with myself, peace with karate, and mostly, peace with competing...

Those who can read between the lines can already sense that yesterday's competition didn't go as well as I'd hoped it would. That both Andrew and I dropped our bo is the smallest of things I need to make peace with, the whole competition thing and how the show is sometimes run are more what made me cringe during that day.

First things first, we both dropped our bo, both at the exact same spot in the kata. Not on the throw per say, but just before, when we roll the bo over our right hand. As I said, this is not what bothered me about the day. As they say, shit happens. Both Andrew and I had made many, many successful roll over hand/throw routines that morning before the start of competition, but heh, we dropped it. Shit happens. Pick up your bo, finish your kata and vow to practice and get better for the next competition. Yeah, it's frustrating, but I can get over it. The other things surrounding the competition thing are a bit more irksome.

Let me make something clear, I'm not making excuses, I dropped the bo, nobody else made me drop it. Here's the day's story...

Let's start with how my bo category started. I got called first. Way they always do it is one of the judges will call the first name and the name of the competitor in preparation. So my name is called. I get to the corner of the ring, judges are looking ahead, looking at me actually. I take this as my cue and bow to make my entrance. I have to little entrance, where I walk to the middle of the ring, strike once forward, pivot to my right to face the judge while making a strike again. Both these strikes are accompanied by a kiai. Even though the kata has not started at that point, this entrance is pretty much part of my kata. Well, as I see them looking at me, I bowed, started walking to the middle of the ring, strike/kiai once, pivot and strike/kiai again only to realise that the judges have just decided to huddle up, just as I was about to walk to them, and their are talking among themselves. I can make up what they are talking about, it's about how they should score the different weapons from one to another. Hello, this could have been done before you sat down. This little entrance routine is all part of my "getting in the zone" routine and them throwing me a wrench like that just deflated me. I stood there for a good 2-3 minutes, waiting for a nod or something. When the nod finally came, I had come out of my "zone". Nope, it's definitely not why I dropped the bo, not even close to saying that, but it sure did irk me.

Anyway, I did my kata that one time, dropping the bo not once, but twice, but the second time was me being simply out of it due to the first drop. As you'll see in the video, I considered picking up my bo and not finishing the kata, but I did finish it. Also, if you pay close attention to my bo, amidst all the spinning, you can see that I made a tiny alteration to its look. I added a black tape mark in the exact center of it. That way, I can concentrate on that black spot whenever the bo is spining in the air and I always try to catch that black mark. If you remember, my old bo had a blue taping right in the middle and I would always try to catch it right in the middle of that blue taping mark. I gave that tip to Andrew about a week ago and he came to me before the competition on Sunday morning, telling me that my trick was indeed working. His bo is also very shiny, but has a red taping in the middle. He told me that now, he tries to concentrate on the red mark to catch it and he told me he is more confident with his throws now. Good for you boy, good for you. :)

So here'S my oopsie version of my kata:

What they usually do when there are more than three competitors is that they make the first three go and then give out scores to the first three. That's what they did yesterday. After the third one had done his kata, they huddled up again and one of the judges came to me, telling me that since it was an underbelt category, I was allowed a "do over" but that I would be penalized 0.5 point. With scores usually ranging within one tenth (0.1) of one another (sometimes 9.7 to 9.8, sometimes 9.8 to 9.88 like they ended up being yesterday) that penalty meant that if I elected to do my kata again, it would simply be for myself, i.e. no chance of getting anywhere near the top 4. There was no way I was gonna leave with that drop on my mind so I told him that if they allowed me, yes I would like to do it again. I did it again and this time it went much better. Not perfect but much better. Here's the video of this second time, and this time, all of me is in the frame of the camera. :)

Then came one of the moments where I say I need to find peace, mostly peace with what I do with the bo and why I do it. I do it because I have fun doing it. I know I've come a long way and I do something not many adult in the 30-39 category do, actually not one other adult did an open bo form. What irked me in that case was the scores I received. I know I shouldn't pay attention to scores and should simply be happy that I did my kata right the second time around, but I just can't help it. The three judges gave me scores of 9.84 all accross the board, before deduction. When all was said and done, without the deduction, that would have given me maybe 4th or 5th place. Thing is, I can't see how at least two if not three of the competitor who were ahead of me did end up there. I'm baffled. I know some parts of my kata are sloppy, at least in my eye, but some of the others were plain "unpowerful". I'm talking about traditional bo form without the humph. Sigh, again, this is where I need to tell myself that I do the bo that way because I like doing it that way, not because judges like to see it that way...

But then, some more similar stuff happened, in traditional kata this time. In the category of fellow blogger Sébastien (30-39yo, beginner underbelt), I saw two competitors simply butcher their kata (one the pinan 1, the other the pinan 3) while trying to impress the judges too much. Yelling a kiai at every little strike while blocking without controlling anything and forgetting your stances is not how I'd say is the right way to practice. And I'm not talking about difference between styles, these competitors are people from my style simply learning at another school in the Quebec City area. Again, I need to forget what I saw, what other people are doing, take a step back and think about why I practice. Back to basics, tell myself not to go for the show, not only to impress the judges. I will get back to that, but for now, that showing bothered me a bit.

But then, prior to the start of competition, I had one discussion that now in retrospect bothers me a bit more even. A blue belt in our 30-39yo category, i.e. in the intermediate underbelt category, told me as I asked him what kata he was going to present, that he was going to present a shotokan kata that is supposedly a third dan black belt kata. Turns out one of his friend is a black belt in that style and has showed him the kata. To me, that guy is missing on the essence of learning martial arts. To me, there's a growing that happens through the kata. The first pinan kata we learn is there because it's a basic one, making your work on your pivots and stances and one simple strike. The second pinan has some different things in it, and so does the third pinan and so on, and so on. I never asked one of my instructors to teach me Cat 3 before I knew and has somehow mastered Cat 1 and Cat 2. Again, I shouldn't have let that bother me, but I did. It's *MY* karate and I do it for my own self. Another thing I need to find peace with, that one should be very difficult though. Kepp practicing the way you've always done is what I'm telling myself...

Meanwhile, Andrew's weapon form category happened and as I said, the poor kid dropped his bo, at the exact same spot where I did drop mine. Here's his kata on video:

First thing that struck me as kind of odd from him, other than anything that happened after the drop, is how fast he was going through his kata prior to the drop. He missed at least a couple of kiai that I know should have been there and probably would have given emphasis to some strikes. I wasn't there to watch it, so on video was the first I'd seen of him, but when I talked to him about it later on in the afternoon, he acknowledged that he he was going faster than he wanted to, but didn't know why. My wife took me apart and then told me that just a few minutes prior to him performing his kata, after I'd worked him up to be concentrated and ready to go, my dad, who was there to see him perform, got a bit too happy to see him and started playing with him, tickling him mostly. She said she could see Andrew losing focus right then and there. Sigh, what was wrong in the stars yesterday? Was every little thing meant to tick me off? I mean, Andrew's up to a level where he's started to realize what being nervous is. He's started realizing that things will come to you when you work hard and stay focused, yet my dad just killed that. Sigh... I cannot be there and control my dad, can I? Should I? My wife told me she told Andrew to stay put and focused prior to his traditional kata and she thought she caught my mother staring at my dad for a moment. Maybe he got the hint... I told Andrew I was still very, VERY proud of him and how far he's come since we first started practicing the bo. We will keep on practicing, no more pressure than before, because it's with that kind of mindset that we will grow.

One way I always know if he has improved or not is by watching my wife, his mother, as he warms up. Since I see him every week, I don't always realize to what point he's really improved his bo handling, but when my wife sees him warm up and her eyes open up wide, I know she's suddenly impressed. :)

The kind of cool thing for Andrew was that they were only two entered in the 9yo weapon form category, so even though he dropped his bo, they still gave him second place and a plaque. My wife did film the other kid and after watching his performance carefully, I'd say that Andrew is closing the gap. Where he used to be well behind the other 9yo bo handlers, he is now very, very close to behind among the very good ones. His kata isn't as flashy as some, but he has better, stronger stances now and his strikes are good with good hand placements. I told him that and that is he kept working on it and on controlling his nerves, he could very well end up beating one of the other kid one day.

Then came my traditional kata category. I present Cat 3. I only learned it about a couple weeks ago so that was more a challenge to myself than a challenge to come in the top 4. Eleven competitors were in that 30-39yo advanced underbelt category, an amazing turnout. I didn't come in the top 4, but I think I did well for a first time presenting that kata. Here's the video, I'll comment on it afterward:

I had a couple of "freeze frame" moments, one evident one right at the start of the kata when I go to my left, and I had a big misstep after my second back kick, but otherwise I'm fairly happy with it. Stuff still needs to be worked on, but I didn't expect to be perfect on that day, simply to make it through without one major blank.

But then again, the cherry on top of the sundae, and yeah, I know this is turning into the rant & vent fest of the year, but there was one more moment. During our traditional kata category, maybe 6 or 7 competitors into it, all three of our judges turned around and watched the bo performance of a black belt from the 18-29yo category happening in the ring behind them. I tell ya, it was as if time had stopped in our ring, so much so, that I thought all competitors had performed and they were simply calculating scores, until I saw a fellow competitor standing at the corner of the ring, on the ready, waiting for a nod to enter the ring. I find that unacceptable, disrespectful even. What's the message we should get out of that behaviour? That since we're not black belts, we're nobodies? Sure I'm pushing it and I sound like a whiner, but sheesh, you gotta do as you preach. You learn respect in karate, in martial arts in general actually, then why not show some to the people you commit to. And what could have I done in that situation? Not much, in my opinion at least, as the center judge in my ring was a very high ranked black belt. This is sad that it happened like that, but I wouldn't be as incensed about it if that were not the second time something like that had happened in my ring in two month's time. Yeah, in the competition back in October, again during my age category's traditional segment, all three judges turned to the ring right behind them, this time to watch a fight again in the 18-29yo black belt category. I'll refrain to comment any further, but that was again, just disrespectful. Maybe I'm just seeing too much into it, maybe I'm just being overly sensitive, you tell me. It just left a bad taste in my mouth to be treated like that, and it was the hushed sentiment of many of my fellow competitors standing close to me. Sigh... Again, make peace with it, forget it, practice, and persevere...

Andrew did a good rendition of his Circle of the Tiger, one that he told me he was proud of, that he felt he'd done well. Here's a video of him performing that kata:

I don't see any big flaws to it but sadly, his name was drawn first and in a category with 19-20 competitors, going first can sometimes be a kiss of death. I wasn't there to see the other and maybe my wife is a bit biased but she told me that to her untrained eyes, he could have placed in the top 4 had he come a bit later in the group. She also said that she felt there were many discrepancies in scores from one competitor to the next. Anyway, as I told Andrew, and as I'm telling myself, getting a trophy or a medal was not the only reason we entered that competition. That competition was more for us to find a new way to motivate ourselves to learn our stuff. He agreed with me that he has indeed grown in his practice of karate, same as I have. His kiai are more "attitude" now, like supergroup7 commented about the Christmas show video. Yeah, that was with his bo, but his whole karate demeanor has gone up a couple notches. If only for that, I think we can find peace with competition...

This was a very long post, if you are still reading, thank you very much. Feel free to comment on my bad fortune. :)

If you're not reading anymore, well you won't read this but I don't blame you one bit. :p

FM

Reminiscing

2006-12-09T19:28:00.001-05:00

Andrew had a private bo class last night and I got to appreciate how much he's grown. Space is kinda sparce for that class so I simply sit down in a corner and watch him and his instructor do their thing. I do learn a lot about stuff I could improve in my own kata, but mostly, I get to watch him do his kata over and over. He's improved a whole bunch in the last year. We started practicing the bo only a bit more than a year ago, in September 2005, and we entered our first competition in February 2006. Yesterday, I had a seat of choice to watch him and I remembered that first competition of his...

Crazy how he far he's come along, from that performance, where he gave it his best, to this show performance:

in about 10 months...

But then, I just came upon this little gem:

That's my boy, back in February 2004, as he was practicing his pinan 2 kata in our living room, in his pajamas, only maybe an hour before we left for the competition. His little brother Matthew was not even a month old back then. :)

That practice led to this performance in the competition a little later on in the day:

Andrew was a purple belt back then and while he didn't win anything in kata, he won one fight and came in second place out of three competitors in the 6 year olds intermediate underbelt category. Yeah, I was happy that he'd brought back a medal that day, mostly for him, so that he'd be encouraged to keep on trying, but I was even prouder of the fact that I felt he'd done his kata the best he could, without freezing at any time...

Here we are, almost three years to the day af those videos and we're getting ready to enter another one. I had a solid traditional class this morning. Cat 3 is the kata that I will present, but you knew that already. Was kinda funny today that some of the other people I regularly practice and learned the kata for the first time at the same time I did, were asking me to do it *with* me, to follow me. If anything, competing has given me some motivation to work on my forms, to try and learn them.

Andrew and I also had a semi private hour of class. Actually was the same as him and me both having separate half hour private classes, except we did turns of 15 minutes with our instructor. It's amazing how much one can learn when you have the undivided attention of one instructor. I again was amazed to see how much Andrew is improving. I'm proud of my boy, he's worked hard lately. No matter what his results are tomorrow, I know he's put in a lot of efforts.

Finally, some funny news regarding the Christmas show. just as we were getting to the dojo this morning, we met my Monday evening instructor. He told me that he was doing the editing on the show's DVD and that he had edited out my bo drop. At first, I thought he was joking, but he told me that it actually looked pretty good. He said I put myself back in almost the same spot after picking back up my bo and that it looks like I'm doing a move to the left, then go on to the right. Can't wait to see that. The DVD should be available on December 18 from what I heard...

FM

Practice makes perfect, or as close to as possible

2006-12-07T10:09:00.000-05:00

I didn't work super hard last night, simply went through routine moves within my bo kata, trying to build the muscle memory that will avoid in the future the kind of mishap that happened last Sunday. If you watch closely, you can see my bo hitting my knee right smack on the kneecap. It didn't hurt or anything, but it was enough to make the bo fly from my hands. That move is fairly routine, a simply figure 8 that starts down to the right to a half turn stop to the left, pull back and thrust forward (with a kiai). Except I started my figure 8 too close to my right knee and never got past that part. Reps of doing that move over and over will help for the future, so that was mostly what I did with my bo, and throws, lots of throws, getting used to the shininess of it under the lightning of a gymnasium, since that's the kind of lightning that we'll be under on Sunday.

I also spent quite a bit of time working on Cat 3. It's not perfect, but I think it's very much presentable so I'm plowing ahead head first with that one.

As weird as this may sound, the best part of the night came after my hour of practice, when Andrew stayed in the room for a private class while I left and went to read just outside. I did watch, but I could hear him, or at least his kiai. Woah, Stephane really knows how to prime somebody to perform a competition kata, bo or open hand. I can't wait to see him perform Sunday...

FM

time for some videos

2006-12-05T19:05:00.000-05:00

I guess I won't make you all wait any longer, here are videos of our performances this past Sunday.

First off, here's Andrew performing his kata...

And here's me walking off the video frame first, then throwing my bo accross the room ;)

I think both videos do show how shiny our bos look under the spotlights but even then, it was much worse from up there...

FM

The next day

2006-12-05T15:15:00.000-05:00

Was kind of cool to go to class yesterday. Despite me dropping my bo during the show performance, many people had very positive comments regarding the kata. Some people were not present but knew I would be presenting my kata and thus wanted to know how it went, while some other were there and talked about it. I even got some very encouraging words from Dgina, co-owner of our school (with her husband, Jonathan, my Monday evening instructor), a fifth dan herself, who told me she really liked my performance. She said she thought I did put a lot of life into my kata and that she enjoyed watching it. She gives class mostly to kids, or to the other instructors at our school (being the highest ranked black belt at our school), so I have never had a class with her, but I hold her in high esteem. She was part of the testers in a couple of belt tests I have taken over the last few years and she is one strict young lady (actually a bit younger than I). She once asked me, back when I tested for my purple belt or something like that, if I had ever thought about competing, since she felt that I did put a lot of life and voice in my kata, especially through my kiais. I guess my kiais did impress her during that performance of Sunday. :)

Anyway, she even thanked me for taking the stage, as she acknowledged that not many adults had volunteered to do so. While it stressed me for a while, I actually enjoyed doing it. I probably wouldn't do it every week because it requires quite a bit of preparation and it involves a bit of stress as I just said, but for this one time, I think I'm coming out of this a better practitioner. I'm even happier that maybe my participating in this thing kind of encouraged Andrew in doing the same and may have helped him grow too...

I should hopefully have the videos of both our performances available to watch here at some point tonight.

FM

A growing experience...

2006-12-04T12:50:00.000-05:00

I guess that's what I had signed up for, at the very least. My regular readers (all four of you ;) ) were probably hoping for some outlandish celebration sounding like "oh yeah, we nailed it, we were the bomb, a-ma-zing!" While it was good, and many people have told me so, not all went super well (cue to my being overly critical).

Andrew's show started at 3pm. There were a couple of satellite schools going before his group and it was fun watching young kids doing their karate stuff on stage. I'm talking about mostly white, yellow and orange belts showing their knowledge to parents and brothers and sisters, very cool. Andrew's group's turn eventually came and they took their spots. They went through some stretching, some pushups and regular stuff they do in class. They then did a bit of sparring techniques and the group was split in two so that 4-5 kids at a time would do their latest kata. Andrew did the Statue of the Crane kata and I thought he did it well, one of his best rendition of it so far. Kudos to him for having worked on it hard.

They then went to three individual performances by kids in his group: one bo kata from a kid who's taking class with us, one open form with music from a girl and Andrew's bo kata. This was a pretty special setup as this was the only group that had individual performances. All of the other shows only featured group showing or special in-between individual performances from selected athletes, like Emilie Paquet or Elymaud Samson, both world champions in their own rights... Andrew's kata went well even though he almost dropped his bo twice. Sounds kind of weird to say it went well with two possible drops, but seeing him on stage is something I never thought I'd see, so that was huge. One of his near drop (the bo touch the floor but he awkardly caught it before it rolled away) happened in the new sequence we put in just a few weeks ago and the other happened during his throw but honestly, a shiny bo is the last thing you want to throw, spinning, while standing under some red and green spotlights. I got to experience that first hand later on... Anyway, I'm really, really proud of my boy. I'll have some videos for you later on this week.

As for me, since the show in which the adults were performing was starting only at 6, we got back home, ate a quick bite and I got back for 5:45 in order to practice a bit. My wife, son and parents all arrived a bit later. I was one of the last one to go on, but I didn't know beforehand, so I warmed up a few times during the show in order to be ready. To be honest with you, I wasn't super nervous while waiting to go on. Preoccupied is more what I would call my state of mind. Preoccupied about how I would be able to handle my new bo, especially its shinyness under the lights. Remember, I received that bo only back on Friday, and from the picture of it, I'm sure you can see that it is very shiny.

Anyway, my name got called up to take the stage and again, I wasn't super nervous. I saw that as no more than performing my kata in front of my fellow karateka friends on a Monday night. For that, I gotta thank my Monday instructor, Jonathan, for his initiative of letting me do just that, test drive my kata in front of my friends.

The kata in itself went well until about two third in, nope not during the throw, that part went well, but just after, in a "routine" figure 8 move, I hit my right knew with my bo and up it went flying to the ground. I picked it back up and finished my kata as if nothing had happened. As the title states, it was a growing experience, for both of us. I saw my son showing the first signs of nervousness, as if he was realizing that this was something special. I think it's a sign of growing up that he realizes that it was something big. I even have him on film, doing some "air bo" (à la "air guitar") when he was sitting in the background while some lower belts were performing their group thing. On my side of things, even with the drop, I realized after a month of practice, that performing in front of people is no different than doing it by yourself. You gotta do it first for yourself, then others are simply watching you, living it through you. This should help me immensely, first in future competitions, then when will come the time to test for my black belt. Controlling the nerves in any kind of showing is alwasy very important...

I will also have a video of my performance at some point, although you'll have to make do with my wife's weird performance at framing the kata at least until the video of the whole show is released by the school. She got so enthralled watching me that she forgot to follow me with the camera and at one point, sadly the part where I perform the newest sequence of my kata. Oops. :) I'm laughing about it now, but I wasn't too happy about it last night... As I said, they have filmed all four shows and they will be released for sale a little before the Christmas break as a fundraiser for the school. You can bet that this is one DVD I'm very much looking forward to owning and viewing... :)

FM

last bo class, or is it?

2006-12-02T23:05:00.000-05:00

This morning was the big Christmas day where I work. Kids were kings for one day. They all got to sit on Santa's lap and each one of them received a present. While it was going on for the whole day, we decided that we would go this morning and miss our traditional class, which is one we can make up for during any other week, while we would go to the afternoon bo class, since that one we could not make up for a missed class later one. It was the last class of the 12 week session.

I didn't want us to stop having class until mid January so I arranged a little something. I will pay for private classes for both Andrew and I every Saturday until the new bo session will start again in January. I'm actually looking forward to these classes even more, even though it'll be a bit more pricey. A bit more pricey, but to have one teacher all alone for me and my son will be great. We should learn a lot and we won't lose as much of our rythm as what we lost last January when we took the long break...

Back to today's class, I was looking forward to that class because I wanted to spend as much time as possible with my new bo in hand. Once again there was a belt test going on in the room right next to ours, so space was kind of restricted. Add to that the fact that our instructor usually dedicate the last class of a session to agility drills and fun and game. After working on some strike drills, he told us he would give us 5 minutes to come up with a trick shot to show to everyone and we'd see if other people could do our trick shot.

I don't have a big imagination for trick shot. Show me something and I'll try repeating it, but I have a hard time coming up with something new. Anyway, it was kind of cool, even though it meant we were not gonna work on our kata during the class. For pretty much all the other kids, it wasn't a big deal, since they are not doing the show tomorrow, or if they are, it's as part of a group. But for us, we needed to get some reps in. We stayed half an hour late and I got to work on my kata by myself, then watch Andrew work on his kata too. I guess we're as ready as we can be given the time constraints.

Wish us luck. :)

FM

Christmas in advance!

2006-12-01T21:18:00.000-05:00

WOOHOO!!!

Let me introduce you to my new friend:

Got to the the dojo tonight and my instructor was giving a private class. When he saw me walk through the door, he asked me if I they'd given me my bo yet. Last I'd heard was last Monday and the prospects were bleak to say the least, so I told him that no, nobody had given me anything. He smiled a wide smile and told me to come see him after I'd gotten dressed.

I had to take care of our registration for the December 10 tournament first, so I went to the desk and that where the guy told me he had a bo for me indeed. Turns out our bo instructor's dad is making them now. That explained the smile on my instructor's face. :)

I got to practice with it tonight and let me tell, from the first throw I did with it, I knew I was in love. Well, not really in love, love, but you know what I mean. :) It's very, very nice. What you see on the picture is what you get. It's all silver, no real special taping or anything. It's a bit bigger in the middle and I like it like that. In fact, my instructor told me his dad had made one for me and he told him to make another one a bit thicker in the middle so it would not break on me. He told me it should last a long time. Let's hope he's right. One thing's for sure, I like it.

I talked about the December 10 competition, well here's the confirmation:

The two yellows tickets are our registration proof with ring and category numbers. I didn't get to practice it tonight, but I'm still gearing to present Cat 3. One week left...

It's the kids Christmas party all day long for the kids of employess at my workplace tomorrow. It's like one long day where kids can come, meet Santa, visit the plant, have fun with clowns and such. It starts at 9 and ends at 4. I have decided that we will sacrifice one traditional class (actually we'll do it another week) and we'll go there early tomorrow morning. I really didn't want us to miss a bo class with show coming up this Sunday...

FM

working hard

2006-11-30T15:24:00.000-05:00

Got to practice with the replacement bo yesterday. Dang, I miss my bo. This one is not bad, but really the balance isn't the same, the rolling over the hand is not the same either. I will log in another couple of hours (one Friday and one Saturday) and I can only hope it'll go well on Sunday. Not much more I can do right now but work hard...

I also worked on my Cat 3 kata and while I still have tiny hesitations here or there, I'm feeling better and better with it.

Andrew was absolutely psyched. Even though it was a traditional class to start the night for him, he was allowed to work on his bo kata, since he will present it at the show this Sunday. Even better, I had booked him a half hour private class right after his hour of traditional class. I left the room during that half hour so his instructor got to work with him really one on one. I've talked about a girl named Emilie Paquet in the past. Andrew's instructor is also Emilie's instructor and while she has worked hard to achieve her world championship, I'm sure he had something to do with it. I didn't see the private class, but gradually through the half hour, I could hear Andrew'S kiais coming on stronger and stronger. They decided together that he would present Circle of the Tiger as his traditional kata for the December 10 competition, but they also put it back together, adding intent and strength to it.

I had a good discussion with his instructor right after the half hour. He told me that the first time Andrew did his bo kata during the private class, he had no kiai in it, looked almost scared to strike cleanly. He went on to add that it's not always the level of difficulty of a kata that counts but also the intent you put behind every move and strike. He said he felt good with how Andrew had worked in that half hour. Judging by the kiai I could hear from just next door, I'd say he did work hard, and learned quite a bit...

FM

It's all in the head

2006-11-28T15:17:00.000-05:00

Yesterday's class was kinda special. I've told you how my usual Monday evening instructor is usually not as heavy on the cardio side as the Saturday morning one, well we had a surprise coming our way yesterday. A good old switcheroo. The Saturday morning instructor was in front of the class, replacing our usual Monday evening instructor. Not that I mind, don't worry. Both instructors have their own styles and I learn about ways to work the techniques differently with one or the other. Some people get mixed up when they face different point of views regarding techniques. I think that's because they try to do it too much by the book, thinking "oh this guy wants me to do it like this while the other wants me to do it like that". Heck, the result is the same with both ways, is what I'm thinking. Try to learn about both ways and find your own way in the middle. Maybe it'll be more similar to one, or the other, or a mix of the two.

Anyway, some people even try to avoid André, our Saturday morning instructor, because he is known to be pretty intense in his warmup/workout sessions. I actually like that with him. He worked us out pretty well yesterday and I'll tell you this, my arms were shaking, my legs were shaking, my abs were killing me, but I loved every minute of it. :)

After that warmup, some of us who'd just finished learning Cat 3 the previous Saturday put in a request to keep on working on it, just so we wouldn't forget what we just put into our memory drawer. I was able to do it on my own the first time we did it and was very happy with it. It had about no flow to it as I kept fighting with my brain, but at least I knew it from start to finish. After we did it with our instructor once, I then went to work on it with two other people who were kind of struggling. I told them to follow me as we'd do it slowly. We did and while I think I was able to steer them in the right direction, I also think that doing it slowing, dissecting every move, helped me learn it at the same time. A win-win situation.

At the end of the class, I was able to do about half of the kata with some sort of a good rythm to it. I'll work on it some more and I'm really thinking I might be able to have it ready to present for the December 10 competition. I, and some other bloggers, have said it before but there's something to be said about competition being a good motivator...

Speaking of competition, or show for that matter, I asked the guy in charge of getting bos for the school. When I asked him if he'd had news, he shrugged, shook his head, rolled his eyes and went "nooooo". I didn't want to push it and simply asked him if he thought we'd get one soon and he simply answered he would give the order to the guy today (Tuesday). Oh God, nothing's been done yet. I guess the one I've borrowed for now will have to do, at least for the show. MrX commented in a previous post that they have bos in stock at Hugo Sports in Montreal and that I could drive down there. I guess I simply wanna whine about it, but I don't feel like driving 2.5 hours one way, then 2.5 hours the other way, with the price that gas is these days, to get a bo, given that I have one who should do the trick. As I said as a reply to a comment from Mat, the damage is already done. It's more psychological than physical at this point. I need to get over it and tomorrow evening will be the first step I will take to get acquainted with a new (borrowed) bo.

Ironically, this has happened before. Right before my second competition ever in last March, I cracked my bo, one week before the competition. Just when they'd given it to me, a week before that, I had spotted a knot near the middle of it and told the guy that I fully expected it to not hold for long. True to what I thought, a week after that, it cracked. Thing was, there was only one week to go before the competition. We put in a call to have a replacement bo done, to their expense, since it was defective. They agreed to do it and told me they would have it at the competition site. When I showed up at their table, they told me they'd forgotten to bring it. They had left it at their shop. Good thing I had practiced with another bo all week long and I had brought it with me. Anyway, even if they'd given me a new bo, I was not even planning to use it. Well guess what. I won that competition.

It's all in the head...

Now if I could only convince myself...

FM

Weekend recap

2006-11-27T12:50:00.000-05:00

Friday night
Nothing very special happened that evening, other than seeing Andrew work real hard on his bo kata in a private half hour class. Our instructor has split our kata in three sections, in addition to the start, which we call the bow, or salute. The plan for the half hour was to have Andrew do all three sections in three different way three times, let me explain. First way is with strong strikes, fairly slowly. Second way is doing it as fast as he can. Third way is as in a competition, so fast AND strong. Instructor started him on his first section's three strong repetition. He added a twist though: he told Andrew that his stances had to be good or else he would not count the rep as one. After 4 reps, and having told Andrew at various times to better his stances and hand placements on his bo, he told him his total count of reps still had not started. I saw a tiny "huh???" go up in Andrew's face but he got back in place and nailed it once, then a second time, then a third one. There were still a few more repetitions to be made, so much so that with a couple minutes to go in the half hour, he was only doing his first strong rep of his second section, but his first section had seen a great improvement. Once the half hour was over, the table was set for our Saturday afternoon class as our instructor told him he should try and go through the whole 3x3x3 thing during the class...

Saturday morning
Before the end of the world happened, it had been a good class. We had an intense warmup that included us running from wall to wall of the room and doing either 15 pushups or 15 situps in between trips. Then the three of us who were at Monday's class, the one where we learned the beginning of Cat 3, wanted to maybe work on it, maybe even keep adding to it. Well I had practiced it a bit by myself and we were able to replicate it, then got a bit added on, then a bit more, only to realize that we now know it all! Sure, "know" is a big word, but at least I know the sequence of moves that need to be made so I can practice it. Next competition is on December 10, so almost two weeks away and I'm tempted to work real hard to be able to present it then...

Saturday afternoon
I did that class with a bo borrowed from my instructor, after starting with a real heavy one borrowed from the school bo rack. The one I borrowed from my instructor had a weird balance to it and it has started warping a bit. On top of it, it was a bit "slippery" because it was not varnished. I dropped it a few times simply because of that. Otherwise, it went well. Our instructor told me to watch for my hands having a tendency to get together in the middle when I do quick strikes. I was getting aware of that, but honestly, I was too concerned about handling that new bo to think about my hands too...

In that class, Andrew and I went through the 3x3x3 sequence. I had done it before and it usually, it's "3 times strong" + "3 times fast" + "3 times strong/fast" without a break in between. I was kind of policing Andrew on that one and at one point toward the end, he asked me "is it hot in here or what?" LOL! I knew he was getting a good workout this time. :) Me, I always sweat like a pig in these class because I almost never stop practicing. Him, he's used to do it a few times, then his mind wanders and there's some lost time, so this time, he did get a good workout...

Got class tonight. Hopefully they will have found a new bo for me...

FM

Devastated

2006-11-25T21:39:00.000-05:00

For those of you who've not seen my latest bo kata video, this is the very middle section of my bo and yes, it's "inoperable". :(

It happened so stupidly this morning. Three of us were practicing Sushi No Kon Sho, all three on a line. Me and a lady to my right were facing the right side of the room. I went to make a strike and the tip of my bo hit the tip of hers. Half an inch hitting three quarter of an inch. Apparently, that was just enough to snap it, right in the middle. As the title states, I was, and still am, devastated.

Practice long enough with a bo and it becomes an extention of you, it becomes part of you. And by long enough, I also mean often enough. I've been using that bo for three hours a week for the last ten weeks. I'm not good enough to simply say "oh I'll pick another one and will simply do my kata with that one". Maybe this can be done with other weapons, but bos are finicky instruments. Not all bos are created equal. Weight, length, even its grip and finish are all things that vary widely from one bo to another. Now, with a week to go until the show, two weeks before our next competition, I have to get used to another one. The bo is the only weapon I have extensively practiced with. Maybe it's just the same with other weapons, i.e. sai, kama, nunchakus, but I know it won't be easy for me.

To add to the problem, there's usually a two weeks lead time to get a new bo through the school and even worse, up until a couple weeks ago, we were simply unable to get any. I asked the school manager to try and get me one, as soon as he can. He knows I'm doing the show and said he would do his best. I know the people who suplly them to us usually have some ready because they are present on site at the competitions with maybe 10 or 15 bos in their display. I just told him that the color didn't matter, as I know they usually look pretty good.

My wife, trying to cheer me up, said it could have been worse. She said I could have broken it the very day before the show, or the very morning of it, while warming up. I guess she has a point, but I'm still shaken up. This is testing my self confidence something fierce...

I will report later on what happened on the rest of the day...

FM

a new Cat in my head

2006-11-21T12:47:00.000-05:00

It's amazing how much one person can grow in one year. And I'm not even talking about Andrew. He amazes me, surprises me, makes me proud by getting better in little increments from week to week, but it's "normal" for him to grow, physically, mentally, spiritually. He's still young and has the world to explore... I'm talking about my own self. About 11 months ago, I received my brown belt, symbol of a 3rd kyu to the black belt in our belt system. On that December 22 night, we were told we should attend the weeknight advanced class from then on. Advanced as in "with brown belts but also black belts". Honestly, I was intimidated, like a kid facing the unknown. But seriously, what was there to be intimidated about? I had already been going to the advanced class on Saturday mornings, not because I really wanted to, but because it coincided with Andrew's hour of class, and I had survived it for a while now. My first few Mondays were indeed intimidating. New people, higher belts, even black ones, moving fluidly. Even had one class were I was partnered with one of Andrew's instructor.

Fast forward to this Fall, yesterday night in particular. Small class, only one black belt in attendance but still, eight or nine brown belts, me included. Since only two of the group knew Cat 3 from start to finish, our instructor told them to go work by themselves while we would try to learn it. Either something has clicked in me or I don't know, but the kata was sinking in so easily. We went fairly slowly, but I could repeat every move. I felt in my place in that class and again, could hear one or two say the usual "you go Steve, we'll follow you". It makes me smile. I won't go and say "okay, I'll do it and you follow" but if they want to follow while I do my own practicing, I'll be glad to let them watch.

We got to about 2/3 of the kata and I actually felt ready to learn it all in one go. Our instructor performed the end of the kata to show us where we're headed and from what I've seen, I'm pretty confident I could be able to learn it in just one more hour of class. Come to thing about it, we've been working on bits and pieces of that kata forever now. KC #11 to 16 are the main ingredients of it, with transitional moves. All these KC, I've known them for over a year now, just never knew when I'd get to use them. Quite glad the time has come...

The one drawback to us working on the kata until the last minute is that I didn't get to warm up with my bo at all and without warming up, I didn't really want to even present my kata to the group. Still, that was a very good class in which I felt I made a big step forward. Looking back one year in the past, yep, I'd say I've grown, although I know I still have a lot of room to grow...

FM

Weekend report

2006-11-20T15:21:00.000-05:00

Friday night practice
Andrew didn't have a private class this week. I still logged in an hour of relaxed bo practice. I think it was even more relaxed this week as the two kids, two brothers actually, who have their own private class in the same room where I practice started working on their show routine as well as their own individual bo kata done with music. These kids are just a joy to look at, and to watch them try to match the strikes with the "booms" and "bams" of the music just had me watch in awe. I didn't simply sit back and watch. The whole hour, I had my bo in my hand and worked on some sequences of my kata, but it was very enjoyable to sometimes take a few seconds of break and watch them.

Saturday morning
We started with a good warmup workout, as usual. I did not realize it during class, but it didn't include pop-corn jumps this week. It did however include the squat on the tiptoes/squat/lunges routine and I've been feeling it ever since I woke up yesterday.

We then went on to do a bit of kicking in the body shields. I like kicking in these, as you can let it go full strength. We went through front ball kick, round house kick, side kick, spinning back kick and a combination spinning back kick to one side/jumping-spinning back to the other side. I felt like I was doing okay, and the groin is holding all right. :) These drills got me sweating quite a bit too.

We then moved on to some jiu-jitsu work, mainly self defense controlled improv. Worked on some neat takedown methods. We were unanmimous after class in the dressing room, it was very interesting to practice that kind of stuff, even though it's not part of our school's curriculum.

Saturday afternoon bo class
Our regular bo instructor could not be there this week so he had asked somebody else to replace him. He had told me in advance, even asking me to help him in case the younger kids in the class got out of hand a bit. See, the kid that replaced him is a 14yo bo whiz kid. And by whiz kid, I mean just that. He passed his black belt in last and has been competing for quite a while. His style of bo handling is a bit more on the flashy side, with lots of rolling of the bo around his shoulders and neck and such. It's not the kind of moves that our instructor likes to do, and me neither for that matter, so it's not the kind of things we work on usually. We started class by working on some strikes and I was able to lead the class through our sequence of 20 strikes we'd put together the previous week. I was kind of proud of that. We then worked separately on our kata as he was watching people two by two perform their kata in front of him. When he called us, Andrew and I, to do our kata in front of him, I felt good, confident. I guess the amount of practice and the fact that I've done it in front of people for the last couple of weeks on Monday nights have both helped me be more relaxed when presenting it. Just a few weeks ago, simply presenting it in front of my regular instructor had me nervous to the point that I would goof up here and there. This time, no goof up, form went quite well. He gave me a few pointers of things to work on. Main one is my left elbow being too high. I asked him to do the strike that causes my elbow to be too high. For the record, I was not disputing the fact that my elbow is too high because I know it is. I simply wanted to see him do the strike and pay attention to how his arm moves. I think I saw something he does that I will try to replicate. To be continued...

After each of us in class doing our kata in front of him twice, we went on to practice some of his signature moves. They included lots of rolling the bo over the shoulders or around the neck. As I said, probably not the kind of strikes I'd feel comfortable incorporating into one of my kata. I have some non fighting moves in my kata, mainly when I spin or throw my bo, but I see rolling the bo around the should or the neck as being just too flashy. The thing I liked about this kid is, he acknowledged that this would be of no use in a fight. I mean, when one of a the 9 year olds in the class pointed out to him that he would not hurt anybody with that move, he just told him that this was part of competing with an open bo form, just like the spinning is.

Some like these moves, I don't really. I had a good time trying to do them though. That, even though I smacked myself in the head more than once trying to get the darn thing to roll over my left shoulder while passing it under my right arm and while doing a quarter turn.. (try picturing that... ;) )

FM

Busted!

2006-11-16T12:50:00.000-05:00

I'd kind of stopped doing my horse stance sessions lately. Thinking about yesterday's post and testing and such, I thought it would be a good idea to get them going again, so with about 20 mintues left in our lunch break, I set 2 minutes on my online timer and got into a good low stance. About 40 seconds into it, I hear footsteps. My cubicle is really in an open area. I mean, nobody really walks by it, unless they want to talk to me. Footsteps got closer, and closer. Was a coworker who wanted to ask me something. She looked at me with weird eyes until I told her simply "karate position, hard to hold for very long" and she saw the timer on my computer monitor...

I wasn't embarassed or anything, it just made for a funny little moment. :)

FM

On where I am now...

2006-11-15T21:22:00.000-05:00

Mat just commented on a recent post, asking a question that I thought was worthy of answering in the open. There goes:

When's that 2nd kyu test coming? It's been a while for you in the 3rd kyu, no?

Do you have a minimum time before testing or is it more like: Sensei shows up nad tells you : Steve, you're up?

cheers,
Mathieu

I passed my 3rd kyu on December 22, 2005 (some dates stay in your head like that ;) ) and yeah, it's been a little while. There's a one year minimum between the 3rd and 2nd kyu tests though so I'm still at least a month from having done my time.

No clue how it'll happen to be honest. Last year at this time, we already knew the date of our test but I don't know if we'll get as much heads up for this test or if somebody (I have two instructors) will come to me with only a week's notice (or less???). Really don't have a clue, and I'm not worrying about it. I'm learning new stuff everytime I go to the dojo, perfecting some already known stuff from week to week, and having fun while doing it, isn't it the most important? :)

After 2nd kyu, they told us there's usually another 6 months period before 1st kyu, which test is also known as the black belt pretest. That 1st kyu test is usually one month before the black belt test. Last I heard, they were testing black belts in June and December as the black belt tests are held in one location for all the schools in Les Studios Unis. No clue if I will be ready for June or not. It's not a race though. I know that someday I will be ready, whenever that'll be, it'll be.

Of the four (me included) that we were at my 3rd kyu test, one has stopped, or at least is currently taking a break, but the other three are still going on strong. I usually see and practice with the other two for their two hours in the week. Since our test, a bunch of other adults have passed their 3rd kyu. I'd say at least 6 or 8 of them with maybe 3 or 4 getting close to testing. There's been some sort of a boom in adult attendance in the last two years or so. Just last Sunday, there was a yellow belt test, the very first belt test in our style, that was going on during my bo class. I counted at least 15 to 18 adults lined up, ready to receive that yellow belt. That's mighty impressive.

Anyway, back to me, I now know all my 12 advanced self-defense techniques from the perspective of a right hand attacker. Knowing them is one thing, to have them come out just from instincts is quite another. We're getting there. One top of that, I will need to master them for the left side. I pretty much know the required traditional bo kata, Sushi no kon sho, although it obviously needs a bit more practice. There's one more kata that I need to learn, Cat 3, and my Saturday morning instructor has pretty much confirmed that he is reserving it for after the 2nd kyu test, so that I can concentrate on it for the last six months. Then will come work on improvising in self-defense situations.

Still lots of work, but it's a long term journey, not a short term trip. As Mat often says, perservere... :)

That whole post was typed this afternoon, well before Andrew and I went to our joint class/practice hour. Since then, some things have changed, not so much for me but more for him. During his pre class speach, his instructor congratulated a few kids who had passed their purple belt while he was away and he also talked about others who were on the verge of being called up for a test. You guessed it, he had Andrew in mind. He kind of looked my way and asked me if Andrew had had his test card while he was away. It's a simple piece of paper that states the date/hour of the test and the level to be tested. When I told him that no, he had not, he went on say he expected to put him on an upcoming test. He will be up for a brown stripe on his green belt, or 4th kyu. That would kind of put him on course for possibly testing for his brown belt, or 3rd kyu, around middle of next Summer. That was just one of those little daddy pride moment. :)

My hour of practice went smoothly, not much new to report on that end. After watching Sébastien's pinan 1 video (provided to help readers know what the heck is that darn pinan kata that I always talk about, thanks Sébastien!), I got the urge to do it. I only did it once and that was my only non-bo action of the hour, but it felt good. Sorry, no video for you on that one. ;)

FM

with new eyes

2006-11-14T15:19:00.001-05:00

Another good class yesterday. After our regular warmup, we went straight to working on our kicks, mainly some crescent kicks and spinning crescent kicks but also some hook kicks and some high round house ones.

From how I started as an ugly duckling trying to not fall down, I improved a lot during the course of the class to end the class quite proud of myself. I was able to whip some pretty good one around the end of class. Again, people will have me believe I know what I'm doing, as some just came to me and ask me how I was doing this of that, or how I was positioning my feet from one kick to another in a sequence. We were doing the kicks as part of a self-defense sequence following a direct punch. While no direct contact occured, our instructor paired us with a partner and I was paired with a very flexible 17yo girl, whom from what I have seen, has practiced some in freestyle forms and open style nunchaku forms, you know the ones where they kick a bit everywhere. Well, I couldn't believe it. The instructor would show us a sequence of kicks to do and then tell us to go ahead and do them in team and she'd turn to me and say "you go first, you're good at getting it down right on the first try". SAY WHAT?!? Maybe I have an eye for learning these things. Yeah, sometimes they were not pretty at first, but I was usually able to nail them by the second of third try. She would then try to mimick what I did and would also nail it, obviously much younger and more energetic that yours truly here... :)

I didn't feel any competition, I was just proud of myself that toward the end of class, I was able to whip my kicks to about face high, with the speed that would have certainly knocked an opponent down cold pretty quick.

One little though. This morning, my 36 year old groin reminded me that it is easy to hurt. Not that I had a huge problem walking but these repeated kicks are sure making themselves felt today. :)

With a little more than 5 minutes left in class, our instructor told me I could get my bo and get warmed up, which I did. There was nobody in the adjoining room, so I just went there to practice. Only a couple of minutes into my warmup, as I was going through the kata, I felt eyes on me . The instructor was watching me intently. Watching me with new eyes, eyes who've not seen my kata very often, he came up with a couple of very good comments on stuff to improve, especially for the end move, where I come back up from being on my knee. I had not realized how much I was leaning forward at that point. I will have to try to work on that.

The kata in itself went very well. I still did it a bit slowed down (but faster than previous times in front of class) to help with control, but I didn't drop it and was more stable in my stances. I got a round of applause from other fellow students and good comments on it afterward and while it's not the only reason why I do it, it sure did feel good. :)

FM

Welcome to the Matrix

2006-11-12T18:01:00.002-05:00

Friday's practice
Not much to report on that one. I worked on some sequences inside my bo kata without doing the kata as a whole. Watched Andrew's private bo class from 6:45 to 7:15 and again got many pointers and some little exercises I will be able to work with on my own. That time slot (usually 6:30 to 7) is available once every two weeks and I've arranged so that Andrew will take a private half-hour of bo class once every two weeks.

Saturday morning
A good class. Got another one of those little nagging cold that makes my sinus get so full it's not even funny. Didn't sleep well because of it so this morning took some sudafed to take care of it. Class went quite well despite the cold though. We did a drill our instructor likes to do every once in a while. Get a mat in place. One person takes place at one end, the rest makes a line at the other end of it. First person in line makes a forward roll on the mat and when he/she gets up, is attacked by the lone person at the other end of the mat. This kind of helps you work out of instincts more, since you don't really have time to think. We did the drill with our self defense against clubs, which seemed to make it even tougher, as it had been a little while we had last worked on them.

After doing all 15 of our club self defense techniques, we went on to work on the advanced self defense techniques. I'm relly beginning to feel more comfortable with these. That felt good.

Saturday afternoon
Bo class was a bit crowded as again, there was a belt test in the room right next to us. Because of it, we couldn't take both room and were kind of limited. We usually start our class with a sequence of 7 strikes that our instructor will call in order at first, then in disorder, usually going faster. Sounds like this:
1
2-3
2-3
4-5
4-5
2-3-4-5
6-7
6-7
2-3-4-5-6-7
etc...

Today, he got the idea that we would try putting together a sequence of 20 strikes, trying never to do the exact same strikes. Some of them would look similar, but have a tiny twist in them. Like we ended up having strike #8 be the same strike as #6, but instead of doing it in a static front stance, we did it going backward to a horse stance. #1 is always done from a natural stance going to a front stance. #2 to #7 are always done from that same front stance. Guess what, how easier would it be to see a video of these strikes? Here are strikes 1 through 7...

All of these strikes appear at one point or another of my bo kata. Now we did get to 20, and I even filmed myself trying to do them again once the class is over, but I sorta screwed it up and only realized once I got home. I was trying to count them again at home and was only able to get to a count of 18, not 20. Turns out I forgot #12 and #13, although I do know what these two strikes are. Anyway, google video is a bit obstinate right now, so the clip of these 18 strikes will be for another day.

Toward the end, the strikes are a bit more elaborate, sometimes including a spin and a strike. Here's one I took out of the group only because I think it's pretty cool (and was able to upload to google video). Our instructor calls it "the matrix spin" because Neo did a move very similar in Matrix Reloaded. I'm just a tiny bit not as flexible at the waist, and I'm also not using any cables :p

Seeing myself on video gives me a few pointers to stuff I need to work on. First of all, my hands are still too close to one another on most strikes. Second, my left elbow is pointing too high, it should be parallel to the ground. Anyway, hope you enjoyed these.

I also filmed my instructor showing off a sequence of strikes so I can try and memorize it to practice it this Wednesday. I had hopes I could get it in the kata before the show, but I have my doubts now. Will probably keep on making what I have better now before adding more stuff to it...

World Championship news
I've got some news from the WKA world championship that was taking place this last week. Emilie Paquet is now a World Champion in traditional hardstyle kata. I was told that she made a mistake in her bo kata where one of her hand kind of went of her bo on a strike, something that she never does. No need to tell you, that's the thing that's very costly at this high of a level of competition. Anyway she still managed to catch second place despite that faux pas. Elymaud Samson, another young girl from our school won in the junior (13-17yo) freestyle kata category, giving us two world champions. We also had two brothers, Mathieu and Sébastien Serré, who took a 2nd and a 3rd place, although I don't remember which one of the two got what. Hearty congratulations to all of these kids, very impressive stuff!

FM

Buns O' Steel

2006-11-09T12:36:00.000-05:00

Since Andrew's instructor is away in Spain for the WKA Amateur World Championship, there was no class for him, thus no Wednesday night special for me. I was not going to let that go to waste though and I went to a regular class for me.

After our basic warmup, our instructor told us he had some sufferin' for us to do. Two by two, locking right hand together, one of the two was told to take position to do a right round house kick, but not kick it. The exercise was to simply extend the leg full length in the air, as if doing a round house kick in slow motion, keeping muscles contracted at all times, keep the extended position for a count of two, then pull back but not drop the foot to the floor. This can also be done while leaning against a wall instead of having a partner holding your hand. We did a series of 15 and at the 15th, our instructor told us to do 15 quick round house kicks. Dear God, I thought I was gonna cramp and stay jammed up after the 5th one, imagine going up to 15. Both people did the right leg and then the left leg. Strangely enough, I expected to be really sore today, but it's not that bad. I guess my buns were already halfway to steel... :D

We then went on to do the intermediate self-defense techniques in quick succession, i.e. without a partner. I had a few blanks that will need to be worked on but they don't worry me too much. The good thing was what followed. We were asked to go through our advanced self-defense techniques with a partner. I was quite surprised (and happy) at how well they came out for me, much improvement has been made on this in the last few weeks.

After going through these techniques, our instructor told me to find a corner, pick up my bo and work on my kata which I was only too happy to oblige. That gave me a solid 15 minutes to work on putting together the transitions in between strikes and spins and footwork.

Class was given by the same instructor as last Monday, the one who'd told me I could present my kata on every class until the show comes. Through to his word, with maybe 5 minutes left in the class, he got everybody to line up at the back of class and he asked people who would be presenting something at the show to come forward. A 17yo girl presented a nunchaku kata that I found was very impressive. Then I realized, she is younger than half my age!!! Man to have started practicing with the bo when I was 15, there's no telling where I'd be now. Anyway, I was next. I got into very relaxed and while there some kinks that will need to ironed out, like my bo flying sideways after I'd brushed the tip on my knee on a simple figure 8, I was very, very satisfied with how it went. As weird as this may sound, I felt I was going faster by slowing it down a notch. Not so much slowing down but kind of stopped forcing it. That made the whole thing much more fluid.

Once the class was over, I was able to find a whole empty room and got to practice for another 15 minutes, full speed. I tell ya, I was sweating like a pig. I set myself at the end of the 15 minutes and did the kata one last time, nailing it from start to finish. I wish I'd had my camera filming me then, I had the feeling I had just done something beautiful. I knew it wasn't perfect, but it felt good. I left for home with a smile on my face. :)

FM

this will need some (more) work...

2006-11-07T12:29:00.000-05:00

Had class last night. As I said in yesterday's post, my instructor asked me to bring my bo so I could show my kata to the others in the class. I got to do that as the very end of the class.

I was very nervous going into it and kind of cold, meaning I had not warmed up with my bo all that much. Sure we'd gone through one hour of class, but I just picked up my bo, warmed up a bit with a few spins and throws and took my spot in front of everyone. Other thing, In order to kind of get used to a new setting, I did my kata facing backward. The thinking was that anyways, on the stage, it would be a new setting anyway, so might as well get used to some different angles right now.

It didn't go super well.

Most people commended me for being able to do it, but I knew deep down that I could have done so much better. The new sequence went fairly well, but I froze right after it, where I should have kept on going where the already existing stuff in my kata should have been. I guess I was so concentrated on the new sequence that I just blanked when I came out of it. I'll work on integrating the two together. I also missed my roll over hand/throw sequence. Again more practicing is required. Finally, I've worked so much on my spins that I think some of my fast strikes have suffered a bit. I'll have to reestablish some balance there.

Supergroup7 and Mat both have made the comment that I tend to look to the floor when doing that kata and that was pointed out to me again yesterday. Something I'll have to be aware from now on.

Coming out of class yesterday, if the show had been this coming weekend, I think I'd have been tempted to pull out. Ironically, this Sunday is the next competition for our group of schools, competition that we decided to skip in order to concentrate on the new sequence in the kata. Good move on our part I think...

The kind of cool thing was that our instructor told me I could do it in front of people every week until the show comes, so I could get used to the pressure of it. Hopefully the nervousness will go away as I do it week in, week out...

FM

Weekend report

2006-11-06T15:29:00.000-05:00

Friday evening
Andrew had a traditional class from 7 to 8 and a private bo class from 8:30 to 9. I learned something though. As tough as Andrew is when it's time for us to get him into bed, 8:30 to 9 is a very late hour for him to take a class, especially after going through one hour of traditional karate. One week every two, there's a half hour that is open from 6:30 to 7 and this coming Friday is the first one. I've already arranged to get that half hour and from now on, he will only take private classes when that slot is available.

From 7 to 8, I practiced in what little space I could find which fine by me. There are plenty of things I can work on even if I don't swing my bo around, plenty of agility work that'll help me "soften" my wrists for when I need to spin the bo faster. I can also do strikes, mainly because strikes can be done with your stance well established in one spot.

From 8 to 8:30, we went to the basement of our school to relax and that's when I saw it in his eyes. Poor kiddo looked tired. We watched a DVD in the salon they have their, usually to keep kids quiet in between classes but at 8pm on a Friday, we had the room for ourselves, then when I told him it was time for his class, he just came with me and went through the class. With one advanced kids class (brown belts mostly) and one tricking class (where they practice all kinds of jumps) room was sparse so I simply sat down in a corner and watched his private class. I sure came out of it with a lot of little pointers of stuff I need to work on myself. That was also good because while Andrew usually puts his heart into supervised practice, he will very often forget advices or tricks, being the 9yo that he is. Since I was listening to his instructor and I'm usually very good at working on stuff that's been pointed out to me, I serve as a walking reminder whenever we're in our regular bo class and Andrew gets in a funk and stops working right. I try not to do it too often though, wouldn't want to annoy him too much, just a little. ;)

Funny thing happened when we walked down to the salon in the basement. Two fellow adult students were practicing. Remember how I talked about people taking me as an example? Well, happened again. They were working on their most advanced self-defense techniques and had a few questions. They figured I knew the answers, just like that. Lucky for me, I knew the answers. All these occurences will start having me really believe in myself you know... :)

Saturday morning
Traditional class was good, as always. I was paired with a 64yo gentleman, brown belt like me. Funny link between us two, he was also part of the first bo class I ever took, a year ago. I think there had never been one adult taking one of these open bo classes and there we were, two of us. He is in incredible shape, I tell ya. Our instructor, after pairing us, told us we'd work on our brown belt self-defense techniques. Since he just started back karate after a nine month hiatus, he was to work on them from a the perspective of a right handed attacker while I was told to work the left side of things. Huh, really? Seriously, it went pretty well, much better than I expected. I guess I'm getting to be more comfortable as a whole as time goes by.

Saturday afternoon
Bo class went very well. Our instructor had us do this drill where you do you kata three times strong, three times fast and three times like in a competition (strong and fast). You can only rest in between series. I was sweating like a pig after my first series so you can imagine the beating I gave myself. I got to perform my kata for him after doing the whole drill and he only had good words. The new sequence went well and he said my spinning and stances have improved, even though I dropped my bo while performing my throw. These things happen. I'll simply keep working on it as I know it was only a fluke. I had not dopped it in my throw in the previous maybe 10 times.

Got class tonight. Last week my instructor asked me to bring my bo so I could show my kata to my fellow students. Hopefully it will go well...

FM

Footwork, like dancing?

2006-11-03T15:16:00.000-05:00

This is a bit late for a report, as real life got in the way a bit.

Here's an insight to what was going through my head on Wednesday night, as I was working on that new bo move we just added to our kata:

*****
okay,
-left knee down, stand up, turn counter clockwise
-left, right, left, strike
-NOOOO!!! you have to end with the right foot forward, not the left
-start over
-left knee down, stand up, turn counter clockwise
-left foot, right foot, left foot, right foot, ugly strike
-come on, a good strong strike! start over
-left knee down, stand up, turn counter clockwise
-left foot, right foot, left foot, right foot, drop the bo while spinning overhead
-okay, forget about standing up, only do the spinning overhead, that last time you dropped it hurt a bit
-spin overhead slowly but didn't drop it
-spin overhead a bit faster, woah, dropped again
-spin overhead slowly but didn't drop it
-spin overhead a bit faster, yeah, didn't drop it, what comes after that???
-spin overhead slowly, didn't drop it, strike!
-spin overhead a bit faster, oh yeah, no drop, and boom, strike!
-spin overhead normal speed (faster was still a bit slow) and strike
-okay, feel like doing the standing up part again now...
-left knee down, stand up, turn counter clockwise
-left, right, left, while spinning overhead normal speed, strike
-NOOOOOO! right foot down, not the left one, sigh...
*****

And repeat for 50 minutes out of the hour. :)

I tell ya, I had almost as much trouble mastering the right footwork so that my stance doesn't looke foolish, as I had learning to time the strike... The good news is that at the end, I was able to do the routine correctly about once every five. May not sound like much, but from not being able to do the spin overhead thing AT ALL, to being able to do the three turns/four strikes routine correctly at least every once in a while, that's a huge step for me. I will still need some work if I want it to look good for the December 3 show, but I have some hope I will be able to. :)

As I said, I worked on that sequence for most of the hour, with little breaks here and there. My bo almost never left my hands which is a bit of a departure from the last few weeks. Maybe I was beginning to feel too comfortable with my kata, as I never felt like working a full hour on it, usually doing some traditional karate work in between bits of open bo work.

I wanted to reply in the open to something that Supergroup7 said in a recent comment about the "BOOOO!" post. She said:

"I would encourage you to refrain from competing mentally, or physically with your son. ( If that is a possibility. He is not your age, so he will achieve different things. ) Enjoy your karate, and remind yourself that you are doing far better today than you did a year ago."

I that post, even though I commented that he got the move much faster than I did, I wasn't so much a competition comment, more like a proud father comment. Very often, I'm still amazed at what he can do, how far *he* has come along since the first competition he's done. I do enjoy my karate and I do it to always better myself, really not to be better than him, or anyone else for that matter.

Another one of those little daddy pride moments came Wednesday night. Their instructor briefed them on how their show would go on December 3. He told them that they will go on stage at the same time as two other schools, but that they would be split in two groups, beginners and advanced. They will basically go through 10 minutes of the stuff they usually do in one of their class, including some stretching, some warmup stuff, some self-defense stuff and finally some kata. He then added that he has reserved some time for three students to present their own kata. I had not realized until he mentionned it, but that meant Andrew will be presenting his bo kata in front of the whole audience. I went "woah!" in my head as I apprehended the announce. Their instructor said it would be one kid from another school presenting a bo kata, a girl from a the second school presenting an open form, and finally Andrew would present his bo kata. I feared he would pout and get all nervous but no, my boy pumped his fists in the air in a "Oh yeah baby" kind of way. To see him react that way, see that he was not afraid to go on stage just made me insanely proud. How my boy has grown in the last couple of years, simply amazing... Following the class, I wanted to make sure I had interpreted his reaction right and that he understood he would be doing his kata on stage by himself (not to scare him but simply to avoid a last minute "I don't wanna do it" kinda crisis). When I asked him if he was looking forward to show his bo kata to everybody, he replied confidently "oh yeah". I added that mom and dad and grandma and grandpa will all be very proud and impressed to see him do it, to which he added "Thomas too will be impressed". Thomas is his best friend... :)

We have a private bo class tonight. Technically, Andrew has a private half hour of bo class but I always stay to listen in and sometimes practice on my own. I always make sure that he gets 95% of the time with the instructor, but I always come out of these classes with a few little tidbits of knowledge for myself.

FM

that would be a very long kata...

2006-10-31T15:25:00.001-05:00

We had a little talk with our instructor last night at the beginning of our class. He's trying to talk people into going on stage and do something for December 3rd but people always have good reasons not to it seems. I felt a little bit of pride when he looked at me and simply said "Steve, you're good to go, right?". Could only reply that I'd hope to :) As I said before, I'm not much of a showboat, but I feel some pride in being able to show something I can do that I know not many people can, at least not of my age, group who all started practicing kenpo from 3 to 5 years ago. Sure a 36 year old black belt who's been practicing with a bo since he was 7 or 8 (think Andrew in some 15 years) would make me look silly, but none of the "grownups" practice open bo regularly.

Seeing how few adults seemed eager to participate, he kind of pep talked them, telling them beginners and even intermediate adults would be looking toward us and he needed people, or else I'd have to do a 20 minute kata. :D

As for yesterday's class, our instructor told us to break in group and decide by ourselves what we wanted to work on. Some of us felt we had not worked on our KC in some time so we devoted some time to that. I'm getting the funny feeling that some of my peers are looking toward me to lead them in such exercises. Not so much teach them, as to simply have one calling the shots (KCs are simply known by numbers, from 1 to 20). For example, yesterday someone simply said "okay, Steve will call them". Err, okay, I don't mind. I guess I'm a dominant type, or at least self-confident enough that they feel like following me.

We then worked on some kata and again, somebody said "go Steve, we'll follow you". That kind of made me feel uneasy. My kata are far from perfect and I'd hate some of my peers (people from the exact same belt level) to be "corrupted" by my mistakes. Anyway, it went well.

Funny thing to end the class. As we were doing Cat 1, our instructor who was silently watching us, came close to me and point blank asked me if I had my bo with me. I never carry it unless I have a chance at using it and didn't have it yesterday. He told me it was a shame as he thought it would have been cool that I'd have showed them my kata. He told me to bring it next week and he would have me perform my kata. I'm kind of looking forward to it. :)

FM

BOOOO!

2006-10-30T15:28:00.000-05:00

Saturday was the offical costumed day at the dojo. They had told the kids they were encouraged to come to their classes all geared up and all geared up, they did come. It was pretty funny seeing them all, made for a very festive day. Kid's instructors were also costumed. As you would expect, it turned out to be a less than traditional for them and because of it, they got them to experiment with weapons a bit, in a controlled environment I should say :) Kids who had their bo were put together so they could practice their stuff, but many of the other kids got their first taste of it. Same goes with the nunchakus, a weapon that Andrew has not played with very often. He told me afterward that he had fun with them. Speaking of Andrew, he went as a Star Wars Clone Trooper but I didn't have my camera with me. Will try to get a picture of him and Matthew tomorrow. After their class, each kid was give a little bag of candies, a bag of chips and a juice box.

They had passed the word along last year but not as much this year. Me being a parent of a karate kid and all, I was aware of Saturday being the big costumed day and I even thought about costuming myself, as I did last year. I decided not to, as I really never have any good idea for that kind of thing. It's sort of a good thing I didn't, as not one adult was costumed. I guess, even though I didn't realize it, they really didn't talk about it in our adult classes. Sometimes, the two worlds (mine and my son's) do mix up a bit to become only one. :)

Anyway, my traditional class was a bit of everything. It started with a very intense warmup that saw us go through 50 jumping jacks, 15 pop-corn jumps, and while there usually say a 15 seconds break before we do something else, our instructor told to go straight to 25 pushups and 25 situps, WHILE we were doing the pop-corn jumps. I was sweating like a pig. We then got two by two and did some more abs work. You know when somebody is lying on his/her, head between the ankles of his/her partner and he brings up his leg only to have said partner push them back down. ugh. 25 of them. My abs were killing me yesterday. Not omcplaining though, was very happy with the workout. :)

We then worked a bit more on Cat 1, fine tuning many little things like some stances, some strikes, even some glances, applying the concepts of the bunkai for the kata. That's always something I like doing. We then moved on to work on our twelve brown belt self defense techniques to end the class with a couple times doing Sushi No Kon Sho with the bo. I kind of lead them, as I can now do it pretty much without having to think too much. This is where having a chance to practice it on Wednesday nights pays off.

We had our bo class in the afternoon. I didn't have to talk to my instructor about the show, as word had already been leaked to him. I have not talked about music to him although I have a couple ideas... I have some ideas to change to opening sequence, nothing too big. He did teach a new sequence of strikes that involves a bit of turning around, not really spinning but more like doign a 360, then strike, then turning the other way then strikes. Very hard to explain in writing, I guess a video would help but I'm not ready to demonstrate anything about that sequence. I'll tell ya one thing, I had a beeping hard time mastering some of the hand moves on that one. So much so that Andrew had it down pat before I did. :)

Practice, practice, practice...

FM

Seeing your kids grow

2006-10-26T15:17:00.000-04:00

Yesterday was our Wednesday night special. I only got to practice for about 40 minutes as my wife couldn't had to leave work a bit late. I kind of took it easy and again worked mostly on agility stuff with the bo, figuring if I can imprvoe my swift handling of it, my transitions will only get better and as a result, after a better transition, my strikes will also fit in better.

I think I did my whole kata only once from start to finish and it was at a reduced speed, trying to really do it with perfect movemements. I did work on making many repetitions of some particular sections though.

Best part of the night came with only 6 or 8 minutes to go in the class when their instructor got them to line up as they were at the beginning of class, got them through meditation earlier than usual in order to talk to them a bit about the upcoming show.

As I told you, Andrew just didn't want to do it the last time they did such a show a couple years. Even though he was two years younger at 7 back then, his attitude didn't seem to have changed last Tuesday when I told him about the show. After I'd told him I would be part of it, I asked him if he wanted to too, but he had shook his head vehemently. I then talked to him about maybe doing a synchronized kata. Every reasons were good for him to turn it down, but not as vigorously. He said he thought I would spin too fast. I told him he will get better with his new lighter bo and that I could adjust my spin to his spin, saying that a synchro was a teamwork. I thought I had piqued his curiosity.

Then came yesterday. Their instructor made a heck of a sales pitch. To the whole group of 12, he told that they HAD TO participate in that show. He made the tough face and told them he thought it was a requisite and that their parents would be happy to see what they are really practicing behind closed doors. He said that they would only present stuff they can do, stuff they work on in class. He added that he was not expecting them to do anything crazy like the stuff that Emilie does in competition and in her demo shows, or *ahem* even stuff that Andrew can do with his bo. I suddenly felt great pride in my boy, seeing him being singled out positively like that, as an exemple of someone being able to do something special that is not expected from others. I guess he must have felt the pride. After class, even before we got out of the room, I asked him if he would do the show with his group and he nodded a confident yes. To me that meant he would do it with kids, while I would present mine with the adults, however a few minutes later in the dressing room, I heard him tell a friend about how he would probably do a synchronized kata with his dad, I told him that this time he would do the show with his friend. Their instructor had told them he already had a very good idea of what they would present and I reminded him that he should trust him. I expected him to pout and maybe start saying he wouldn't do it then, but no, he nodded again when I told him that we would keep on working on a possible synchronized kata to present someday. Even better, in that dressing room, he reminded me of what his instructor had just said, that they were welcome to invite not only their brothers and sisters and parents, but also grandparents and even friends. As he put the emphasis on "friends". I asked him if he had a friend in mind and he immediately mentionned is best friend of the moment. After a bit of prodding, he said he wanted to show him what he was doing in his karate class. Talk about growing in confidence overnight. :)

As of now, we don't what his instructor has in mind, but I trust him to try and use Andrew well in their part of the show. Shouldn't be that big too, as each school only has 10 minutes on stage...

FM

Apparently, the show will go on...

2006-10-24T15:17:00.000-04:00

Nope, the title isn't a reference to my nagging little cold, which luckily is still only a nagging little cold. It's got more to do with the fact that it looks like I've enrolled into doing a demo presentation of my bo kata for Christmas show our school is putting together. Dear God, what have I done???

They did that kind of show two years ago. Basically it's one big day with four separate representations for four distinct groups of students affiliated to our school. I say affiliated because we have some satellite schools where classes are given by instructors from our school, but in out of town school gymnasiums, like the Wednesday night class that Andrew usually attends. Two of these representations are for kids attending those satellite schools, another is for lower belt kids attending classes at the dojo and the final one is for higher belt kids, adults, and boxing students. Each representation runs about 90 minutes and is simply for kids to show their parents what they are working on in their karate classes. Sometimes it'S by putting together little skits, some other times, they simply show off their kicking/punchinh/self defense skills. For us adults, it's simply to have fun, show each other what we can do with all of us gathering afterward to eat some pizza (kids eat pizza after their representations too, don't worry).

Advanced adults are a bit more looked upon to show adult beginners what they could be doing in kenpo in a couple years from now, if they stick to it. That being said, and knowing that I'm THE ONLY underbelt (i.e. non black belt level, or even more, non instructor) doing any kind of open bo work, well, I almost expected it when our instructor talked about the shows at the start of class yesterday and said something along the lines of "hey Steve, how about a demo of some open bo stuff?". Again, knowing how I'm THE ONLY underbelt adult doing any kind of open bo work (repeating for emphasis on "THE ONLY" ;) ), I understand the appeal for our instructor, who's also half-owner of the school with his wife, to have me show my mad skillz. How could I have said no???

Wanna hear a funnier bit still? At the end of class, after he had passed along a little flyer talking about the shows, he got back to me, kind of trying to make sure I'd go along, only to add "and your kata, has it got music on it?". SAY WHAT?!?!? Err, no. I got enough problem holding on to the dang thing, I can't try to synchronize myself with some boom-boom music at the same time. That's when the "oh my God what have I done?" part really hit me. Believe it or not, I'm a fairly shy person with a profound fear of being laughed at. Showing videos of my kata in here is kind of a therapy for me. I know people from my regular traditional classes will probably like watching one of theirs doing an open bo demo, but if I can't really fit the thing to music, I'd rather do it without any. This'll have to be talked about with my bo instructor. Even more, we will have to get started on these changes to the kata, since these shows are on December 3rd and our next scheduled competition is the very next Sunday, December 10.

Two years ago, Andrew didn't want to participate in the show, despite many of his friends taking part in it. He's also very shy as far as being in public. Judges in a competition are nothing to him, but other people, he's still unsure. Maybe seeing me getting ready for such a thing might pump him up a bit. Another idea I had was to do our kata kind of like synchro style. Maybe that would work, Steve and mini-Steve, me and mini-me. His group is taking part in the same representation as mine, from 6 to 7:30pm so maybe fitting a father and son thing in there could have some appeal to both kids and parents. Just thinking out loud here, I'd still have to get him to agree to go on stage. Oh, almost forgot, the show is happening on stage, in an auditorium that can seat about 420 people... sigh, what have I done? I'm frigging nervous just thinking about it...

And before you ask, yeah, they will be filming the whole thing so there should be videos to be posted at some point in mid December...

FM

Sweatin' the toxins

2006-10-23T15:32:00.000-04:00

Ever since the competition, I've started feeling the symptoms of a little cold getting stronger in me. Not much, you know, the itchy throat, a litte sneezing, a little stuffy nose. Dang did I felt like I was sweating all the toxins out of my body this past Saturday. Not that it was a much tougher than usual warmup or anything, but you know how it is when you are not 100%...

Anyway, went through class no problem. We worked some on our kata, the Crane, Cat 1, Cat 2, but also Pinan 3. Got a few things corrected in my Cat 1 kata, some more work for the hips. Someday we'll get it right. :)

The bo class turned out to be a "compact" one. Even though a couple students were missing, we were restricted to about half of our usual space because a best test was going on in the adjoining class room. We worked mostly on agility drills, including some of them while sitting down on the floor. I tried, and actually succeeded a couple times, to throw my bo over my head while it was spinning horizontally. I will probably never incorporate such a move in one of my kata, but it was kind of fun for one class. Can't wait to finally have some time with our instructor so we can start working on new moves to add to our kata. Might have to get Andrew a private class (which I attend anyway) for that to happen though. Andrew skipped his traditional class last Friday (the one where I usually have some free practice time) because he was making up the swimming class of last Sunday that he missed in order to go to the competition...

Trad class tonight, the cold seem to be coming a bit stronger. Hopefully I'll sweat it out a bit more and it'll go away faster...

FM

Falling in love, again

2006-10-19T12:57:00.001-04:00

Pretty uneventful night of practice yesterday. I brought my bo but only did my kata a couple times, and only at about half speed. I did work on my handling of it, the finer kind of handling. Gaining speed in my spinning will lead me to spend less time spinning it and will make my strikes become the main focus of the kata.

I did all my kata, starting with the three pinan, then Circle of the Tiger, then the Statue of the Crane and ending with Cat 1 and Cat 2. Was definitely more relaxed doing Cat 2 by myself as opposed to being in front of judges, and I worked on some of the little things I didn't like on the video of it.

I also served as attacker for the class instructor. He's done that a few times in the last couple weeks, ask me to come over to help him demonstrate a self defense technique. I'm more than happy to oblige, as I often get tips about how to do them, even though I already know the techniques. Hearing somebody other than my regular instructors explain them, and especially to younger kids, is good. It also helps him as showing a technique against a lapel grab is easier to show with an attacker of about his size and strenght as opposed to being grabbed by a 4 feet high 8 year old. :)

I had brought Andrew's new bo with the hope that there would be a private class right after his traditional class and that we would be allowed to share a tiny bit of the gymnasium. Sadly, the only class planned for the evening was their 6 to 7 traditional class. I still pulled out Andrew's bo for him to try it for a couple minutes. We bought it at the competition last Sunday, but he didn't use it for the competition, seeing how much lighter it was than his older bo. His reaction to it yesterday was a pure joy to see. He went all "woah" and his eyes widened as he did a few figure eight and then some strikes. As I grabbed out stuff to head back home he told me he would have really wanted to keep on practicing with it. Again, when we got hom, at 7:10 or about, he told me he'd have wanted to practice outside, pretty much in the dark. It had rained all day and it was wet all over, so I told him he couldn't but it was still very nice to see him get all excited about it. He told me he really looks forward to our next bo class so he can practice with it some more. Looks like he fell in love with his bo, again... Good kid...

FM

Kali, err say that again?

2006-10-17T15:21:00.000-04:00

Got through warmup yesterday and a quick run through the first 24 self defense technique, a run that reminded me that I need to work on them more. Man was I mixed up on some of those, even though I know all of them, or I used to know all of them...

Once through these, our instructor told us we'd do some kobudo and that Daniel, his usual assistant and 3rd dan black belt, would be the instructor for the night. I was expecting him to tell us to go get a bo, but know, he pointed to some sticks on the floor, kind of like strong cut off broomsticks, maybe a couple feet long, maybe a bit longer. He told us what we would be working on was called kali. I have found many places talking about kali on the web and it's also called stick fighting, or escrima. Not so sure it falls inton kobudo, or at least it doen't fit the okinawan kobudo line, as the kali are a philipino weapon.

He took us through a few different strikes, some very interesting stuff. You actually hit with the stick as if you had a blade attached to it, mostly doing motions in continuity, in the shape of an eight. We went throuhg the downward 8 (with right hand, from right should to left thigh, go up and round to left ear and strike downward from left shoulder to right thigh, repeat the round movement), then the upward 8 (reverse the motions, from left thigh to right shoulder, go round and tow right thigh and strike back up to left ear). That last one could look a bit like hitting a tennis ball with a racket, either brushing it forward or with a backhand. The effect with a blade would be a slicing of the blade, going upward or downward, depending on which way you go.

We went on with a bit more, including some blocks and counterstrikes then we went to actually hit the things together. Weeee!!! :) We actually did a few self defense techniques that did make a lot of sense. Some say finding a broom to use as a bo is easy, but think about it, it would be even easier to find a two foot long stick to block then strike an attacker. Block, strike to the wrist, chamber the second stick (yeah, we had two in our hands at one point, how scary) and strike again. I loved it! :)

FM

Some bo kata videos

2006-10-16T22:48:00.000-04:00

Here they are, father and son, well, actually it's more like son then father, but you get my drift... :) Enjoy!

Comments are welcome. As I said, I stumbled early in the kata and it stayed on my mind for the rest of it. Had I started off solidly, it would have showed for the rest of it. Still not a bad kata, I think. Will need to work on my hands position and strieks. For reference, check when I make side to side strikes. The elbow of my forward hand is a tiny bit bent. That shouldn't happen...

Andrew's performance was very good, from my perspective. Lacks a bit of explosiveness, but he's fairly clean in his strikes and spins the bo better than I do. Give him one more year of work and he could be doing some crazy forms. Go Andrew!!!

Finally here's a bonus for you. Remember when I talked about young Emilie Paquet going to the World Championship at the ripe age of 12? Well, I was able to film her in between one of our kata. There it is:

She is only 12, remember that. Her sense of focus never ceases to amaze me. A great performer. She'll be in Spain from November 6 to 11. Good luck in Spain Emilie!

Expecting too much?

2006-10-16T10:12:00.000-04:00

I can't lie to you, I come out of yesterday's competition wanting more. Out of six competitors in the 30-39 weapons form category, I came in second place. Not bad some would say, but I was gunning for first place. I'll have some videos up soon and you will see where I stumbled in the start of the kata. It didn't start pretty and even though I recovered from it, it was always on the back of my mind and I kind of lacked focus from there on. Still, I'm happy with the plaque and will aim to work on what went wrong and on adding strike sequences to the kata for the next competition. I'll also try to keep on working on controlling my nerves.

My traditional kata, called Cat 2, I thought I had it fairly well pegged. After seeing the video, I see that I was so stiff, it wasn't even funny. Came in 5th out of 6, so kind of ugh. Anyway, there again, I come out of the competition with some knowledge of what I need to work on to advance. If only for that, it was a productive day.

Andrew had sort of a frustrating day on the whole. I saw him do his bo kata from afar (getting ready to present mine) and at first I felt he had performed it well. That was confirmed when I saw the video. He did indeed do it the best he probably could have done it although he was competing against two other very good bo artists and he came out of it 3rd out of 3. The good news for him is that this was his last competition with his very heavy bo as we bought him a very light one. It'll probably take him some time to get used to the lightness of his new bo, but I think he'll benefit greatly from it. Darn, he can spin the bo more naturally than I can, with a bo heavier than mine is, I can't wait to see him spin a lightweight one.

Then came his traditional kata. There, I was the one who learned something. Next time we will compete, we will certainly have him take a private class before the competition, but we'll do it earlier than only four days before the competition. As I was saying in a previous post, Andrew changed his competition kata from Statue of the Crane to Circle of the Tiger only last Wednesday. While he did it perfectly on Friday, that was in front of one of his instructor. He had a couple of tiny stumbles yesterday that, coupled with a few erraticly high scores given to another little girl, meant he finished out of the medals. They don't give positions for people out of 4th place, but he was probably in the middle in a group of 10 competitors.

In fighting, more "frustration" ensued. They were only three to enter the 9yo intermediate underbelt fighting category. They gave a bye straight to final to one kid while Andrew and the other one fought to start it off. It's point sparring, two points for a kick and one point for a punch, head or body doesn't matter. Andrew's opponent was a smallish but feisty kid. He got ahead on Andrew 4-2 at one point where I saw that he was keeping his guard in front of his belly to keep Andrew from scoring with a body kick. And told Andrew to go for the head which he did in two consecutive points, but the other kid go the winning point on a jumping kind of punch that only lightly grazed Andrew's head. Andrew lost it 4-5 and was given 3rd place while the winning kid fought again, lost and received 2nd place and the kid with a bye received 1st place, even though he just got lucky to get a bye. Nothing against the kid, just the circumstances... I found that Andrew had a much better fighting stance, especially cutting on one thing he used to do. He used to switch his forward and back foot all the time, often selling his next move. This time, he didn't do it and I thought that was good of him.

Not a bad day all in all, even though it could have been better.

I'll be posting videos soon.

edit: in my whining and self-cetered state, I forgot to mention that one very nice thing happened in that day. I met two very nice fellows in Mat and akarien, both bloggers and martial arts enthusiasts. It was a lot of fun talking with you. Sadly, I don't have pictures to show for it since when we got together for the picture, my wife was gone, with the camera bag, trying to fine a knife to cut Andrew's new mouthguard. In my stupid nervousness of the morning, I had forgotten his mouthguard at home, doh! :)

FM

As ready as I'll be...

2006-10-14T22:34:00.000-04:00

Tomorrow's the day...

I'm a darn perfectionist. Job, family, a whole lot of stuff keeps me from practicing 8 hours a day but that's almost what I wanted to do the last couple of days. At one point, I have to tell myself "that's okay, it's about as ready as you'l be able to get for this one competition". And with that in mind, I forced myself to wrap things up this afternoon...

Had a nice, if not spectacular practice session with the bo last evening. Just worked on some basics, spins, the throw, some strikes. Didn't even do the kata once from start to finish. Meanwhile, Andrew's class was doing another one of their mock competition. I didn't see his kata, but I knew he was on with his first kiai. Kid's got some life in his kiai now. He finished tied for first place with another older kid, maybe 11 or 12 years old. Even this morning, as I was getting ready for my class, his instructor of last night told me about how well he had delivered that kata. Good, good...

Today was more of the same for him, he did his kata in his class but they didn't score them today.

Me, we worked on some freestyle self defense stuff and since I had told my instructor I wanted some free time on my own to work on my traditional kata, Cat 2, I moved away from the group with about 20 minutes to do in the class. Did the kata numerous times and I'm feeling good about it, about how I'm delivering it. It's not a very long kata, but it plays into my strength, as it calls for many kiai and my kiai are somewhat convincing. ;) I know that I will be competing with some other people doing Cat 3 which is a much longer kata, with more moves and strikes and even kicks, but I'll give my all...

In the afternoon was our bo class. Worked some on my kata, section by section until about 40 minutes in when our instructor got to me and Andrew so we could do it for him once. Andrew did it first and got some stern telling off by our instructor. He said he didn't get the feeling that Andrew was pushing and I must admit that I also felt like Andrew was a bit mushy. He started over and it was much better. Once he was done, our instructor told me he would really like to see Andrew perform his kata with a lighter bo. Andrew's bo is indeed a bit heavier than the kind of bo you need for the kind of open style kata we practice. To tell you, his 4.5 foot long bo is much heavier than my 6 foot long one...

When we got to my kata, I started but then darn it, got untracked. I simply stopped and asked to start over and then, BOOM! I nailed it, strong kiai and all. At one point, it was almost surreal, I had the feeling that after my second kiai, the other students in the class had stopped practicing to look at me. Felt kind of weird. I know it won't be like that tomorrow as there will be tons of kiai coming from all over the place, but it sure felt special today. When I got done, my instructor applauded and told me if I do it that way tomorrow, there's no way I can't win. I'm going there to give it all I got, we'll see.

I'll make sure to let you all know how it went.

Good luck to my fellow bloggers, Mat and akarien. I'm really looking forward to meeting you guys.

FM

One step back, to better leap forward

2006-10-13T00:00:00.000-04:00

Wednesday's practice started kind of weird. As the kids were starting their class, their instructor got to talk with one of the parents about her kids class taking. He got the rest of the kids to kneel down and meditate, as we do at the start of every class, for a couple minutes or so. After a bit more than the couple minutes, seeing how he seemed to be busy talking, I simply asked him if he wanted me to take charge of stretching. Not that I wanted to impose myself, but I'm alwasy up for helping out. He said to go ahead so I went to the group and got them to stretch. Felt kind of weird to be in front of the class like that. The instructor got back not much later and took over control of the class, thanking me for the help.

I went on to practice my bo a bit. Had trouble finding back some rythm for the bo throw but eventually got it back. My mind was elsewhere at the start and when the instructor asked me to come help him show some self defense techniques to a couple of brown belt kids, it almost felt good. Lasted about 10 minutes and when I got back to my bo, I was well into it. Did the kata a couple times pretty well although never as good as I'd want it to be. I'm a perfectionist, heh...

Anyway, I also did Sushi no kon sho a few times and Cat 2 also a couple times. It came out well. Will work on it a bit more on Saturday.

Andrew had a private one-on-one half hour class with his instructor right after his hour of traditional class. I decided to leave them together for the 30 minutes session, kind of not wanting to be in the way. I got back after 25 minutes and saw Andrew do his bo kata. Even though his traditional instructor is not our regular bo instructor, he was able to pump some life in his kata. He knows what judges look for and he gave him tips and hints as to where to look when striking, taking control of his stances. He said the first time he did the kata, Andrew's stare was about all over the place. They worked on that and I was indeed impressed with how Andrew delivered his kata for the one time I saw it.

When he got present his traditional kata one last time, his instructor turned to me and told me they had agreed it would be better for him to present Circle of the Tiger instead of Statue of the Crane. They worked on getting Circle back to presentation form, but I also agree it's a much stronger kata for him, even a possibly winning kata. I was beginning to feel bad about "forcing" Andrew to present the Crane kata. While he has made strides in making it his own, he's still a tiny bit away from nailing it and his instructor told us that as soon as there's some wavering in the crane stance, deductions start to apply. The whole situation reminded me of the Quebec Open last April. We were maybe 8 or 9 men competing in the traditional form category, ages 30-39, advanced underbelts. I finished 3rd with Cat 2, my highest kata, but also one I grew to like. After they'd given out the finishing position, the center judge told us all to gather around him and I thought what he said was very cool. He told us that we almost all looked like fine practitioners that were kind of testing our limits, presenting forms that would be the next one asked for the next belt, or in my case kyu, test. He added that sometimes in competition, it's not always necessary to present the highest kata you know (or sometimes barely know as you just learned it) but one with which you feel comfortable, one that you have really made yours, that you can feel in your guts. Yeah, that made sense then, makes even more sense now. Maybe in December I'll try that route and could present Circle of the Tiger myself...

FM

Long weekend recap

2006-10-10T12:51:00.000-04:00

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

Feeling in synch

2006-10-05T12:50:00.000-04:00

Nope, I'm not talking about the boys band but more about feeling in synch with your kata. There are some days where nothing seems to work. You take a wrong step here, feel like you lacked "juice" in your punch at another place. Yesterday evening was just the opposite. The bo felt good in my hands. I did my kata from start to finish only once, but I worked on many sequences and they indeed felt better with every repetition.

But not only with the bo did I feel in synch, but with my traditional forms as well. While the kids started with their warmup and went through punches and kicks work, I did some bo work. Once they broke out to work on separate things and Andrew was sent to work on his Statue of the Crane kata, I watched him do it once. He knows it and seems able to do it without much hesitation although he lacks intent in it. What I mean is that some of his punches and/or blocks seem a bit lifeless. It was not like that with his previous kata, Circle of the Tiger, but he had been performing it for a long time, so I can only assume he'll get better with time, as he grows with the kata. To kind of help him, I told him about his punches and blocks and to give him an example, I performed the kata for him. It had been a while since I last practiced the Crane but darn it, I fell right at home with it. I really felt good doing it, felt I had a lot of purpose. Hopefully this will help him see what needs to be done to make the kata "believable".

This feeling of being in synch continued for the rest of practice, and was especially good when practicing the kata I will present at the upcoming competition, Cat 2. I have a few little things I need to work on, and I know it is not perfect, but I felt good while doing it...

This was our first Wednesday night where both classes were condensed into the 6pm class. Andrew's instructor gave a special notice to the class though. Even though it makes for a better class to have 12 kids at once in the big gymnasium, they still have to account for the second hour, i.e. pay somebody from the school to be there, pay rent for that hour, etc. He said that that second hour would be available to anybody who would like to receive some private class. I've paid for private bo class for Andrew in the past, but we've never done it in traditional class. In his notice to the kids, which I was the only adult listening to since I was at the back of the gymnasium, he mentionned that that kind of class can be good for anybody wanting to get ready for either a competition (ding ding) or a test. I had already talked with his instructor in the past, about the possibilty of taking some private half hour classes. I felt the timing would be about perfect for a half hour next Wednesday, about four days before the competition. I asked Andrew when I talked to him about his kata and he said he wanted to do it, so next week we'll do 90 minutes with him going private for the last 30 minutes.

I'm sure this will be very good for Andrew. His instructor is very good with kids, and especially with kids doing competitions. Incidentally, he will be going to Spain for the WKA for the World Amateur Championship, with a student of his, a 12yo black belt named Emilie Paquet who they say has a shot at winning as many as 4 world titles. She lives in the same town as us and I train with her dad, a newly graduated brown belt, like me. I saw her a few times and she is simply amazing, a great competitor. She will compete in creative form, creative weapon (bo), traditional weapon (bo), and traditional form (hardstyle). As I said, she is 12 and she will compete in the under-13 category, meaning this year is her best shot before a few years, as 13 year olds are usually having a hard time competing in the 13-17 class... The championships will be happening from November 6, to November 11 so... GO EMILIE!!! :)

FM

Getting out of an unfriendly handshake

2006-10-03T12:31:00.000-04:00

Very interesting class last night. We worked on some self defense technique against someone who would grab your hand or your wrist, handshake style, i.e. his right hand grabbing my right hand. It's hard to put into words but basically the technique consists into bringing down my hand, for the sake of example here let's say it's the right hand that was grabbed, while twisting my body counterclockwise so that I kind of turn my back to my attacker while bringing my hand close to my lower back. Yeah, at first it is counterintuitive to turn your back to him, but the way it twists his hand, he gets at my mercy and I can hit him with a left elbow to the face, at which point he would probably let go of my hand and I can follow up with a combination with my right hand. Was pretty effective in practice...

We finished class with some work on our kicks. Our kicks have americanized names so I'll call them by what I remember them being called. The first we worked on was the spin around hook kick. You start wacing your opponent, swiftly turn clockwise (if you are going to kick with the right leg) and hit the hook kick while spinning. It was a lot of us looking like fools at first, then being woozy, then getting a bit better, but not by much. The second I think was called a spin around jumping reverse crescent kick. Kind of similar but with a jump added to it, as if the first one was not tough enough, heh. Anyway, we did them two by two with a partner holding a pad. Gave us a good workout.

Ring 12 and 4 is where we'll be

There's always something special to me when I make our entry into a competition official. To me it means there's no coming back, now you gotta get ready for it... Well, it's now official. We're both entered into the October 15 competition in Ste-Foy. There will be 228 different categories at that competitions and from the categories list, you can see that I will compete in categories #16 (weapons, 30-39, all underbelts) and #88 (traditional form, 30-39, advanced underbelts) while my son will compete in categories #8 (weapons, 9yo, all underbelts), #57 (traditional form, 9yo, intermediate underbelts), and #103 (fighting, 9yo, intermediate underbelts).

Even though rings 4 and 12 could seem far apart in numbers, they will be pretty close in distance, as you can see from this plan. Only one ring apart. I think that's the closest we've ever been in a competition, and maybe the closest I'd want us to be. We're not close enough that Andrew could get disturbed by me doing one of my kata right before him, while he's getting ready.

This competition will be even cooler as one of my reader has already confirmed that he will be competing. Yep, akarien, all new to the Nick Cerio's Kenpo style, has decided that he will compete. He will compete in the same ring as me, although he'll be a young puppy among the 30-39 crowd. ;) Good luck akarien!

FM

The bo groove is back, now what?

2006-10-02T12:42:00.000-04:00

Saturday's traditional class was good. As always a good warmup workout to help sweat out a bit. Was a bit frustrated that some upper back pain prevented me from going all out in the situp/crunches section. Going up and down was making me cringe so I held myself still. You gotta know not to push it when something's not feeling right. The pain started around last Thursday and is just about gone now. Don't know where it came from, might have forced the wrong way while holding Matty...

Class went on with us doing Sushi no kon sho a few times. After skipping last Wednesday night practice, I was not hoping I could remember the whole of it and yep, it's in there to stay. Now we'll start working on the form of it, make it look more natural. We went on to work on self defense techniques against a club attack. It had been a looong while since we'd worked on them, both me and my usual training partner, so it felt good to get some work done on them. We followed that with a run at the 12 upper level open hand self defense techniques. We are now to the point of adding a bit more speed to the execution of these techniques, more hips, less robotic movements...

A weird thing happened at the bo class though. We were having dinner Andrew and I and people we had not seen in the first couple of weeks of bo class were coming to the dressing room. First a kid took is lunch with us. Last I'd seen him, he was taking the first of two hours of bo, the one for beginners. I knew he was not a beginner, but thought he was taking that hour for special reasons (like havign another activity later in the afternoon). Anyway, that made for one extra student. Then another kid that I had never seen showed up. Then three 17-yo white belts arrived. I remembered about our instructor telling us that these three new students would probably be moved to the advanced class in order for them not to get too bored as they would most probably learn faster. This meant we were 13 students in that class. It was very cool for the warmup, where we only do strikes while standing in one place and you hear all these bos move and all, but it made for a tough class when we got to work on our kata. Think about it, my bo is 6 feet long and in my kata, I have some strikes where I'm fully extended, baseball strike style.

Anyway, we managed to each find a spot and nobody got hurt. I worked mostly on separate segments of my kata, repeating them over and over until I felt good with each one of them. I felt I really got my groove back in that class. Did my kata in front of our instructor toward the end of the hour and he told me it was day and night from last week to this week in the fluidity of the whole kata. He pointed out 3-4 things to work on. He's got a good eye and I pretty much always agree with what he's telling me to work on. I just can't see these things for myself. For example, he told me that I now lean a bit forward in only one sequence of strikes, which is an improvement since I used to lean forward on pretty much every sequence. I now need to concentrate on that one sequence.

He then showed us a new sequence he wants us to practice so we could include it in our kata. It's a pretty cool sequence, but I'll need mucho work on it to get to work. It includes a part where we drop to one knee, strike with one hand to one corner, go back up, spin and strike back to that same corner. Anyway, very hard to describe, as you can see by my complete lack of ability to do so. :) Andrew is not one who's comfortable trying different new things, but he didn't completely dismiss the sequence. I made sure to cheer him up saying we would take time to master it before we put it in. He always wants to do "like daddy" and while I was the first to modify our kata last Sprin, he asked me to show him the changes so he could do them, "just like daddy"... :)

The season opening competition is on October 15 and there was never any intention for us to put anything new in our kata for that competition. The plan right now is for us to enter the October 15 competition, skip the November one and enter the December 10 one. That would give us almost 2 months between now and December 10 to work on adding new sequences to our kata.

Speaking of competition, Andrew's probably the one of us two who's got the biggest hurdle to overcome. We're not officially entered, but I plan on competing in both weapon and traditional form. For my traditional form, I will present the same kata that gave me a 3rd place at the Quebec Open, Cat 2 which is also my highest kata. Andrew on the other hand, has been learning a new kata since he passed his green belt (5th kyu) last April. He'd been presenting Circle of the Tiger for a long time. He was used to it and had perfected it. Now, as a green belt, if he were to present that kata, he would be judged more harshly, or more thoroughly, so he's working on presenting his latest kata, the Statue of the Crane. It's a tricky kata to master. From the Studios Unis website, they say this kata (just like Circle of the Tiger) is derived from the Karazenpo Go Shinjutsu system, which doesn't help me much. The tricky part in it is that, as its name implies, it has a crane jump/stance on one foot, that is not always easy to land without looking awkward. Anyway, I talked with his instructor and he seemed confident that Andrew would have it in competition shape in time for the 15th. Other than traditional form and weapon, Andrew usually also enters in fighting where he usually fares pretty well. The kid's got instinct.

FM

Karate humor

2006-09-28T21:26:00.000-04:00

Not much practice in the middle of the week, but I'm in a real good mood, so I'll share my latest favorite funny karate vid.

Don't be fooled by the intensity displayed by the fellow in the next video...

FM

Time works things out...

2006-09-28T15:17:00.000-04:00

I skipped my Wednesday night bonus yesterday. My wife called me at work around 4, asking me if it was indeed all right if she had to stay a bit late. As I told in my "soothing" post, that Wednesday night bonus is simply that, a bonus. Sure, one I would usually like to use as much as possible and on most other times, I would have probably sounded annoyed on the phone, trying to convince her not to stay late, but get this, she had a good reason not to be at home on time: she was meeting her boss for her 6 month evaluation...

She called me a bit later at home, all excited, and right then and there, I think I fell in love. With another woman. A woman I've never met... HER BOSS!!! She told my wife she was working too hard and that she should not be forgetting about her children and... HER HUSBAND!!! :D

My wife had in mind of asking for a company provided laptop so she could log in to work from home after 8pm, i.e. when Matty goes to bed. Her boss offered her a laptop before she ever asked for it! HOW SWEET! Now I will have to enforce some rules so she doesn't stay up until 1am, but at least she should always be home on time. :) I can't tell you how much little needless stress this will take off my shoulders.

And you know what, she did make it on time for me to get to that Wednesday night bonus if I had wanted to. Thing was, I had already told Matty that he would come with daddy give a ride to his big brother to karate. He was so looking forward to it that I just couldn't tell him he now had to stay home while me and his brother left for karate. He came with us, walked to school were we dropped Andrew... It was cool, him holding my hand... Life was (and still is) pretty good... :)

We did have some tiny bad news yesterday. Andrew's instructor told us after his class that he would merge the two hours and starting next week, there would be class only at 6pm, for one hour. They had something like 5-6 students in the first hour and maybe 6-7 in the second hour and I agree it makes more sense to have a bigger one hour class than two very sparse class, even if that means there will be students from about any level. To me, I doubt this will change much, as I'd guess there will still be room for me to practice one corner of the gymnasium, but this means Andrew will not get his half hour of bo practice on Wednesday's anymore. I'm not sure he minds for now though. He told me he didn't feel like going to practice yesterday, although he wanted to go to class and I'm thinking that when he'll want to up the tempo a bit, I'll pay him some private bo sessions...

FM

Soothing...

2006-09-26T12:47:00.000-04:00

Picture this...

4:15pm I leave work
5:08pm After I'd picked up Andrew at school and Matty at the daycare, we get home, me and the boys. Matty asked about what we'd eat the moment I picked him up at daycare. Spaghetti was on the menu so I set water to boil on the stove and meat sauce to warm up in the microwave.
6:00pm Done with eating dinner, I think about giving a call to my wife still at work, about me having a karate class at 8pm. Simply asked "you remember about my karate class, right?" to which she replied "yeah, at 8" to which I specified "please get home for 7:40 at the latest".
6:05pm After having cleaned the table, we set forth to work on Andrew's homeworks and lessons.
6:25pm Homeworks done, I sit down to read in the living room while Matty watches TV and Andrew plays with a friend upstairs.
6:50pm I think about giving a tiny call to my wife, simple reminder that maybe she should think about packing it in and coming home. Her commute back home is a solid 40 minutes, without taking into account any possible delays. She tells me she's turning everything off and leaving.
7:03pm Dawning on me that she usually calls me from the road when she's left, letting me know she's about 30 minutes from home, and she's still not called me, I feel worried. Did she decide not to call me since we just talked, or has she still not left? Unsure, I call her again and sure enough, she answers on the first ring. I said only two words as she answered: "OH PLEASE!!!" to which she replied sheepishly: "I'm leaving right now"...
7:46pm She turns into our driveway. I'm right in the doorway, shoes and coat on, ready to walk out the minute she walks in. The Dojo is 10-15 minutes from our house, due to many, many red lights on the way. I'm not a happy camper, in fact I was pretty much angry at that point...

There's an back story to this. She's notorious for being late, or at the very last minute. This is a new job she's started only 6 months ago and she seems to enjoy it very much and because of it, she puts in many hours in the week. She usually leaves home for work when the kids get up (around 6:30am) and get back home after 6:30pm, and even, if I don't tell her I need her home for 6:30pm, it's a stretch.

Her previous job was a shitty one in which she worked a manual job while she's been trained as an engineer. Many months during the year she was there were on the night shift. She doesn't seem to mind putting in the hours now and seeing how she seems to be happy in what she does, I don't mind them too much either. Sure, that kind of schedule means I take care of waking, dressing and feeding the boys in the morning, in addition to driving them to the daycare/school. I pick them up afterward, get dinner ready (pretty much simply warm up something cooked beforehand), get the homeworks done for one, give the bath to the other.

I can't really complain, I know at least one who's probably much more busy than I am (hi supergroup7 and your many kids ;) ) and complaining, I am not. It's just that I'm really getting back to looking forward to my one weeknight karate class, you know, the more you practice, the more you want to practice. The Wednesday night bonus is just that, a bonus. It's free practice more than anything else and I could miss it, giving a ride to Andrew with Matty and not practice myself in case she'd get home late. The Friday night that is usually Andrew's second night in the week, and where I sometimes stay for some free practice, that one too I can do without. But the Monday night is one I don't want to give up as it's a class where I learn new stuff...

I was seriously pissed off when I left home for The Dojo last night. Some, mostly uninitiated people who think karate is only force brute and hitting stuff, would say it's not a good idea to go to a karate class in a foul mood. It works the other way around with me. Practicing karate frees my mind of everyday problems. We worked on our advanced self defense techniques. I'd worked them mostly under the guidance of my Saturday morning instructor, André, and practicing them with our regular Monday instructor, Jonathan, seemed to make them completely different. Lots of work to do, but it also helped me see them with new eyes.

The hour seemed to go by like 15 minutes. Not much sweat but a whole lot of brain food. I got out of there a renewed man, soothed from earlier petty angriness I had on my mind...

Sure we had a good talk back at home, but I wasn't angry or pissed off anymore. I simply asked her what time she thought she would have left if I had not called her at 7:03. She said she had no excuses, didn't see time fly. I believe her, she's like that...

I'm not asking for much, just the Monday night. I asked her to set some popup reminders in outlook, write yellow stickie postit notes all around her computer monitor to remind her of the limit time to leave. She said she would try her best. I know she felt bad about it, but she feels pressure. She just wants to be the best at her job and I can appreciate that...

Thanks for reading me, I feel much better now...

FM

Getting the groove back

2006-09-25T10:12:00.000-04:00

Saturday's traditional class was a bit uneventful. We worked mostly on Sushi No Kon Sho again, this I was almost leading the class with it. My rendition of it is far from perfect, but I at least know the sequence of strikes and blocks from start to finish. I'm sure it helped that I was able to practice it midweek last week.

We ended the class with a little exercise our instructor sometimes has us do. It involves one person staying at one end, and a lineup of people on the other end, maybe 10 feet away. First person on the lineup goes forward, does a forward roll and when he/she goes up, the people that was alone attacks him/her for a predetermined self defense technique. It can be a bit disorienting to do the forward roll then get up and be attacked, but it also helps with working our self defense techniques.

We also did some work on our latest kata, Cat 2 in my case. I got a bit of my groove back on that one, but that was not where I felt I needed the most work.

After our little dinner, our bo class came. Our instructor watched me do my kata first and immediately saw that I was having trouble with my transitions between strikes, hence the groove thing. He said that he thought my strikes were strong and quick and made with a purpose, but I had to make the kata move more fluidly. Even though I'm not a big fan of pure baton twirling, I see that some spinning is not entirely wasted and makes for some good transition between section of strikes. As a reminder of what my bo kata looks here's a repost of it. The angle is not very good as my father filmed it from up in the stands, but at least you have an idea about what I mean.

See, even the first spin, right after the start, is giving me fits right now. So this Saturday, I worked mostly on spins and figure 8. One way, then the other way. I was already feeling much better with it by the end of class.

Andrew worked on trying to bring the kata into sections, meaning you have a few strikes, then a big kiai and a mini pause. The way he does his kata right now, he's more like just on one rythm with little explosion. He is also trying to get back in the groove and this might have something to do with it. Again as a reminder, here's a rendition of his kata in one of his last competition.

I should get to put the Quebec Open competition to DVD at some point soon and I will post his two kata in here. Unfortunately there were nobody to film me at that competition, so I only have my trophy to remind me of my performance. ;)

FM

Horse stance report

2006-09-22T12:55:00.001-04:00

I'd kinda stopped working on my work stance at work. Didn't do any of it over the Summer. When I got back to it a couple weeks ago, I found that my good old online countdown timer I used in the past had been removed. Bummer...

I went on a search and found one really neat one at www.online-stopwatch.com. You can use it as a stopwatch or a countdown timer or even download it to use it offline as a flash file.

I started doing 90 seconds of fairly low horse stance a couple weeks ago to maybe 2 minutes with the last 60 seconds at a perfect 90 degree angle. Set 2:30 on the timer yesterday but for some reason, gave up with 60 seconds left, lack of will I guess...

I wasn't too happy with that and I set 3 minutes on the timer today and I held it. The last 45 second was pretty much a 90 degree angle, not so much because I wanted too but because I felt just so close to dropping to the floor. Legs were shaking madly by the end of it, but I'm happy I held it.

I don't do it every day and will probably start using my free weights in the basement at home to do squats at one point this Fall, but I wanted to started doing some horse stance sessions to get back in the mood...

At one point, I'll use the clock as a stopwatch and will set it so small I can't read the numbers and I'll try to hold it as long as I can, but that's not for now...

FM

Three section staff kata and more

2006-09-21T21:21:00.000-04:00

I recently commented about my fear of the three section staff but only remembered today that a blogger I read regularly had just recently posted a kata with that weapon.

His name is Clint Leeung. He is from Montreal and from his profile, has been studying and training in martial arts for over 32 years. He has been competing at a very high level for many years, especially is such highly regarded circuits like the NASKA circuit, the NBL circuit, and the WSKF circuit.

He has title his kata a "kung fu three section staff kata" and I sense a bit of chinese (wushu?) influence in this one. Let's take a look at it:

After watching it, I sense that this kind of weapon has a couple of use. First it could definitely be useful to keep an attacker at bay, as you can swing it with a lot of amplitude. But then, you can also use it in short distance, because of the sectional side of it. Kind of interesting, if still a bit scary weapon to me, :)

He's also posted a video of his bo staff kata, with which I understood he did most of his competing in the last year:

I like it very, very much, but I'm biased toward the bo. It's got some spin, some strikes, very good strikes and speed. It's almost a shame we can't hear him kiai though. I like feeling the power in a bo staff kata.

Clint has posted some comments he has received about his two kata on his blog. You can read them here. I agree with what he says, now that I've read the comments. I honestly don't feel good enough with my technique to be any kind of critique to one of his kata...

Anyway, I doubt I'll ever get to his level, but he gives me something to look up to. And he scores bonus points for training with these forms inside his house...

FM

Wednesday night special

2006-09-20T22:01:00.000-04:00

Wednesday nights are my training nights with Andrew. Let me explain how this works. Our karate school runs many (maybe as many as 15 or so) of these "satellite" schools in the area. These are simply karate classes that happen in the gymnasium of regular schools, after school hours, where kids can get karate lessons. Some of these satellite schools are offered to towns which are maybe a 30 minutes or longer drive one way to the dojo, and were started in order to give a chance to more kids to practice our style. One thing though, these satellite schools are only in effect during school season.

We live maybe 10-15 minutes from the dojo and attend most of our classes there but during school season, Andrew used to take one of his two weekly hours at the local satellite class. Sure, that satellite class was not put together to help out with transportation, but maybe more as a way to have more rooms in a dojo that would be overcrowded. And while doing that, they allowed us, and some other kids, to have the same karate classes they would have at the dojo, but only 2-3 minutes from their homes. I mean, Andrew could walk to that school...

At one point last Winter, I asked his instructor if I could borrow a corner of the big gymnasium so I could practice with my bo. You'll agree that a gymnasium is a much better place to practice than inside any house with regular height ceilings. He agreed and off I went. After a couple of weeks, Andrew asked me if he could bring his bo, but I didn't want to, as his class is a traditional class and not all other kids practice the bo. One thing I thought was to ask his instructor if we could come half an hour before the start of his class, while the beginners class is going. Again, we would only take a corner of the big gymnasium. His instructor agreed and since then, we've been regulars at the Wednesday nights for an hour and a half.

Tonight marked the start of the Fall season at the local satellite school so off we went. I supervised Andrew's half hour of bo, as he practiced to get back to where he was back in May.

For the last hour, I did many things. Some open bo work, some work on sushi no kon sho, which I was again able to do by myself from start to finish (yay!). I actually enjoyed sushi more than my open form. I need to get back in the groove with my open bo moves. I feel a bit out of it. I guess it will come back at some point. I also did some self traditional kata work including all the kata I know. The neat thing about this time at the gym is that while it's not really an hour of class for me, Andrew's instructor, whom we've known for three years now, is always around. I won't really go to him if he's with the kids, as I don't want to take his time away from them, but sometimes, walking for a group of kids to another group of kids, he'll see me doing something and he'll tell me about a thing or two to correct. He did that with some strikes in sushi tonight and also in the ending move of the cat 1 kata. I'm very grateful for these little tidbits of advice. I mean, everything I can get in will make me better...

Finally, I wanted to share with you this pictureI found today. It's from February 2003, as they were about to give Andrew his first medal ever in his first competition ever. He was barely 6 back then and an orange belt...

He's the third kid in the row and while the quality is not very good, I couldn't help but smile remembering that first competition. He presented a blocking form that day, his highest "kata" he knew at the time. Actually, it's not really a kata, simply a blocking form, as the name implies. I remember him being amazingly shy to go to the judges and simply name his name and the form he would do. How he's grown since then...

The neatest thing was how he did in kumite. The kid right next to him (the blond one looking toward the camera) is the son of a coworker of mine and, even though we didn't know it at the time, he would grow to be his big rival in kumite. They faced each other quite a few times in the couple years that followed. Andrew held his own most times and although I think he lost a very close fight that day, we were cheering him on as if he were Rocky boxing in Russia...

FM

The ways of the bo

2006-09-19T15:17:00.000-04:00

I've titled this post very similarly to an excellent post recently made by oniyagi on his blog. I say similarly because you can see the tiny "s" added to the word "way" from his post to mine. That's because I've been learning many ways to handle the bo in the last year.

First way was in our competition bo class. These classes, taken after Andrew had picked the bo as his weapon of choice and I simply tagged along, became very interesting to me, very quickly. In open bo competition, you could pretty much make your kata as you go along. Bo movemement is very fast, although still very crisp. There's some spinning of the bo, which some people might refer to as "baton twirling". I don't care much for how other people call it as I have fun practicing it. As weird as this may sound, it relaxes me to handle the bo, toss it in the air and pick it back up. I do have some spins incorporated into my bo kata, but I also try to keep all strikes as meaningful as possible. This kind of bo kata is pretty much the most "artistic" I've ever been in my life.

Then came a first sort of more traditional bo handling in my learning of Sushi no kon sho. There's no spinning in that kata, lots of blocks followed with strikes, some who don't look so much powerful but more precise, and some other which are powerful downward strikes. Some differences about hand placement during these powerful strikes are still giving me trouble while doing this kata. While your hands are placed each to a third of the tips of the bo when you bring the bo over your head to strike, you slide your right hand down a bit as you strike downward. That way, with your left hand being the lower one, your right hand will end about a forearm's length from your left. Will need to practice that to perfect it.

Finally, a third way, even more traditional, is the kobudo way. We'd brushed that kind of bo handling back in May and we practiced it again for the whole hour of yesterday's class. Man that was interesting, confusing at first, but very interesting. We spent some time perfecting the strikes, yeah, yet again, as there are, again, some basic differences. Whereas you never really reverse your hands with either the open style or the first traditional style I'd practiced, now we were asked to reverse them on the bo to be able to do strike both right and left handed, both times going downward. I mean, in open style, we often have strikes where the left hand is the forward hand, but these are usually strikes where you're going upward. We finished the class with a few sparring type techniques where you were first asked to block, then disarm and finally strike the attacker.

I found that class to be absolutely great but the most exciting part of the night was actually right after the class itself had ended. The instructor that gave us class yesterday was not our regular Monday night instructor, although he usually assists on those Monday night classes. Right after the class ended, four of us discussed with him of how interesting that kind of class was and he told us that he's been taking classes of kobudo weapon handling with the idea being to eventually offer some of these classes at our school. He then demonstrated some of the bo kata done in this very traditional way, even doing our pinan 1 kata with a bo. I told him that if they needed to build a list of names of people interested, they could put my name down right now. I would be very interested in a class like that.

He added that not only the bo would be part of that kind of class, but also the sai, the tonfa, the kama, and even the sansetsukon (or three sectional staff). That last one scares me to death to be honest with you. :)

FM

A bo, a sandwich and some Gatorade...

2006-09-16T20:33:00.000-04:00

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

Chocolate anyone?

2006-09-14T12:49:00.000-04:00

They do this thing every Fall season at our karate school where you can sell chocolate. They don't force anyone, really, I have never heard even a hint of somebody from the school saying something about "hey, you know, you do compete a lot and maybe you should sell some chocolate so we can improve the school's equipment" as I've heard in other sports. When I was young and playing hockey, selling stuff was mandatory. Everybody had to do it.

The idea is pretty simple. Pick up a bag of 22 bars, sell them at $3 a piece, bring back the money and get a $10 gift certificate you can use for equipment sold by the school, like bo, kama, kicks, punches, head gear, euqipment bag and the likes. I'm sure the school is making a tiny bit of profit on top of that $10 and I would guess they use it to indeed improve the training facilities, like that nice cushiony carpet they put in place for one half of the first floor.

Anyway, I had never done that in that past, meaning with the karate school. I guess I had psychological scars from my youth of going to ask my uncles and aunts if they would buy chocolate, and/or walking in the neighborhood, door to door, asking neighboors I didn't always knew, if they wanted to support me.

Seeing how every once in a while, a coworker would come around with something to sell for one of his kids, I thought "hey what the heck, I could be that guy, bring the chocolate to work and hopefully see it sell by itself". I picked up a bag on Monday, right after my class. I wanted to see how many my mom would buy yesterday when she came visiting us, so I waited until today to bring it to work. I had 11 bars left in my bag after my mom bought 9 of them (yeah, Andrew and Matthew are their only two grandchildren and they tend to be a bit enthusiastic about anything they do ;) ). Well, what do you know, got in to work at 7:45, day starts at 8 and by 8:05, all 11 bars were sold with me offering them to maybe 7 persons. One of them is a lady from sales around here and she almost giggled uncontrollably at the sight of chocolate. She bought two rightaway, saying something along the lines of "I'll go tell the others at the other end of the corridor" and bang, another lady from finance was at my desk within 30 seconds, buying 3, one for her two for her boss. I tell ya, it was pure frenzy. People came to me until about 10 am asking me if it was right that I had chocolate for sale. Seeing how so many people seemed to want some, I'll pick up at least one, if not two bags this weekend and I've told everyone I'd have some more on Monday :) That lady from sales has already presold two bars...

Anyway, two more bags would make it $30 toward the purchase of Andrew's custom designed bo. They are a bit costly, at $75 per, but they are hand decorated and amazingly light. I had mine done last Spring. This is what it looks like (click the thumbnail to see bigger):

It's not exactly the same, but I used that picture to tell them what I wanted. I will have to sit down with Andrew and see what colors he would like...

FM

PS to blackbeltmama: I'll post something about our kata lingo soon. I'm only resarching some of it a bit more.

Less is more

2006-09-12T10:09:00.000-04:00

It was a good class on Monday evening. One of two hours in the week truly dedicated to "advanced" students, it was indeed that with eight people in the class, five brown belts (all 3rd kyu) and three black belts.
Reason why I say less is more is that eight people is a perfect class size. In last week's class that resulted in my rant, we were something like 18 or so people. It wasn't really the fact that the class was an "intermediate/advanced" one, but more the sheer number of people that did us in. When it is that crowded, it doesn't always take much for a class to derail...

Back to this week's class, we started it with some work on our more advanced kata. Sure, work is always needed on our first few kata, like the pinan (#1 to #3) and kata like Circle of the Tiger or Statue of the Crane, but the more advanced kata like the two Cat kata sometimes have even more little things that need to be looked at. Being only eight in the room yesterday, and all of us starting with Cat 1 as the first kata of our evening, it allowed our instructor to see us more and correct. He pointed out to me some problems with my kokutsu stance. The kata starts with a bow, then to a quick horse stance, then to kokutsu facing to the left. I had never realized it, but when going to my kokutsu stance, instead of keeping a width of about twice shoulder width, I had a tendency to bring in my left foot a little too much, sometimes as much as 8 inches. This sometimes even cause me to raise my left heel and made it look more like a cat stance. I was happy to get that corrected and pointed out to me. I will pay attention to that in the future. Less is more in that case meant more instructor time for each student...

I know Cat 1 and Cat 2, but there also exists a Cat 3, that I will need to learn for my black belt test. People were asked to keep doing their highest kata when a kata they didn't have was called, so I did Cat 2 quite a few times, as the higher belts did cat 3 and Lin Wan Kune, which from what little I know, is an adaptation of a shotokan kata that we only learn at the black belt level.

Once done with the kata, we paired to work on self-defense moves against a variety of attacks. What I liked is that our instructor made it into an almost bunkai interpretation of Cat 1. That was neat. One strike we often call hammer to the head within the kata was also presented as a possible use of a sankyo wrist lock and we got to work on that which I liked since sankyo is one of my favourite wrist lock and one I often try to find a way to apply. We also saw that turning in another way, we could use kote gaeshi to control the attacker.

I was paired with one of the three black belts for these techniques which was really nice as I got to see what it is when moves come in naturally, nothing forced. Sometimes, less is more applies to much more than the number of students in a class. Less tension in your shoulders, fists, hips, body overall, means more, better reaction. I am still way too stiff. Will need to work on that.

FM

Saturday sushi

2006-09-11T12:30:00.000-04:00

Was my first Saturday session back and I was kind of looking forward to it. As I said, I'm a bit out of shape, or should I say, not as in shape as I was maybe 3 months ago. Our Saturday morning instructor is a very intense 57 years young 4th dan who just loves to make us sweat and by seeing how many students come to his classes, I'd say there's a need for this kind of classes among the members of our school.

Anyway, after a solid cardio warmup that included among other things some pop corn jumps, we went through our KC's, from #1 to #20. A good back to basics quick session that I felt was very productive.

Once that was done, we broke down into small groups and three of us who passed our 3rd kyu together back in December got to work on Sushi no kon sho, the traditional bo kata that is required to test for the black belt. I'd never done it to the end, often doing bits and pieces of it but right from the start this week, I had the feeling we could probably do it all. Not that it was fluid of anything, but we still got to do the first section our instructor showed us, maybe 2/3 of the kata, without really having to ask for his help. He then showed us the last third and we were able to redo it by ourselves. I will probably need a lot of practice with it before it looks nice and everything, and I might not even be able to do it again right this moment if you asked me to, but it felt good to have been able to do it from start to finish.

Since we had about 10 minutes left in the class, all of us three decided to move aside and work on our most advanced self defence techniques, the last group of 12 out of 36. All three of us did quite well with these and we were able to run them in a little under 10 minutes with little goofups.

Andrew had to skip his coming back to training this week. He was supposed to start again on Friday evening and come with me on Saturday morning, as we've done for a few years now, but I first cancelled Friday when, after picking him up from school we got home and he had some solid fever, some 39C. He still had glazy eyes on Saturday morning so I decided to have him skip that session too. He will make them up at some point this Fall. He was even supposed to have a two game soccer tourney on Saturday. We had made the decison to also keep him out of that, given that the weather was very rainy and very cold, but they ended cancelling the whole thing.

With his soccer season officially over, I have my Monday evenings free again so I will switch my karate schedule to Mondays for the second hour of the week, in addition to my traditional Saturday morning hour. Open bo classes should start soon, maybe in a couple of weeks or less, and these will be on Saturday afternoon, only an hour after the end of our traditional class. This means we'll have to bring sandwiches to the the Dojo and eat there, me and my boy.

FM

Never too young to start, kind of...

2006-09-07T20:52:00.000-04:00

I said I didn't practice much with my bo last Summer, but I still got it out a few times. One of these times, what was my surprise to see this little thing come out of the back door and walk toward me. 30 months old and ready to rule the world with his bo, ladies and gentlemen, let me introduce you to (drum roll please....)

Matty the Terror!!!

(click it, it should open in a new window. I tried to embed but failed miserably yet still wanted to share it with the world, without putting kiddo on youtube ;) )

Sorry for all the giggling, that's mommy being oh so proud of her little boy. He actually surprised me. He actually looks like he almost knows what he's doing. One thing's for sure, he's much, much better at it his first time than I was my firt few times trying to spin it :)

As I said, he's only 2 and a half years old and we will not start him up before he's at least four, in one of the initiation class or our school that is only 45 minutes long and sometimes more play than actual martial arts. Andrew started in that kind of class when he was two months shy of being 5 years old. Matty, like most little brothers, sometimes says he will do everything his big brother does (I will play soccer and football and do karate), and at some other times, none of the things his brother does (no, no, no, I don't wanna). I'm hopeful that he will follow our path. We'll see...

FM

Not where I thought I'd hurt

2006-09-07T10:19:00.000-04:00

First class back went well. It was kind of good to me that our instructor made it into a back to basics class, focusing on some KC that are part our pinan 2 kata, working on snapping the wrist at the end of blocks to make them more like a strike than simply a block.

More than anything though, it's not physically that I'm hurting, more mentally. My head is spinning. So much stuff I tried to remember, so much stuff I know I need to work on. I felt stiff with my strikes, kind of inadequate in most of my moves. I will work on it, don't worry, but still it's in my head for the day, nagging me...

It was good to be back practicing although there was one thing I found kind of annoying. There was kind of a silliness in the air, a goofiness if you will. Granted, it was the first or second week back in the Fall schedule and many people had not seen each other in a while but once the class starts, you'd expect adults to act like adults and practice seriously. Not saying they didn't at all, but I felt like it could have been better. Still, I did my thing and was able to work on some things I needed to work on, or remind myself that I still have so many things to work on, depending on the angle you wanna look at it... ;)

Finally, a note to self: GET A HAIRCUT!!! Not that my hair are very long, but I just hate having even only a inch of loose hair to the back of my head and sweating in it, gah, just hate it.

FM

I dread tomorrow morning, afternoon, evening...

2006-09-06T16:01:00.000-04:00

Good day to all of my (silently counting in his head) four readers! :)

I'm back, after a slow karate summer. Thanks to many other family activities, and sort of a lack of will, I took it easy on my karate training this Summer. Among other things, I have put on a few pounds, pounds that I will hopefully be able to shed in the next few weeks as I resume my training toward this coveted black belt.

If you've read some posts in here, you already know that my son Andrew's commitment to two other sports, namely football and soccer, kind of forced me to try and catch an hour here and there, sometimes doing three in a week, at other times, going a couple weeks without a class. Yeah, I could have practiced harder by myself, but after a pretty intense spring season, I felt like taking it easy and I mean, I never stopped completely. At least not until the last couple of weeks, after our annual subscription ran out. I then decided that we would indeed sign up for another full year, but only starting during the week of the labord day Monday because Andrew had his last soccer game on that day. Well, that day has come and gone and tonight will be my session back.

Yeah, I dread waking up tomorrow morning and taking that first walk out of bed... In a good way though. :) I need to sweat a bit, work those muscles, get back in the karate groove...

No confirmed date for it, but the first competition of our group of schools (Studios Unis d'Auto-Défense) is usually in early October, so this could be coming quite fast. Andrew has been competing for quite a few years now, but he's never done any of the Fall competitions. In the past he would always start competing in a season after Christmas. Me, I only started last February, so no need to say I've also never done one this early in a season. There are 6 local competitions in the season, culminating with the prestigious Quebec Open. I intend for us to do as many as we can, at least 5, maybe all 6 of them. The Lévis one in February and the Quebec Open are two that I want us to go to for sure.

Many things will have to be worked on in the coming weeks, months, (heck years!), on top of my overal fitness. In the last few weeks of Summer, I felt less and less at ease with most of my kata, especially the last two, Cat 1 and Cat 2. This was possibly from a lack of practice so I'd expect this to come back on its own. I also know that all my self-defense techniques against club attacks need work. I need to work closer to my attacker with those. Can't wait to pick up my bo again and seriously with it. I did some work with it in the backyard (will even have a video of Matthew, our 2.5 year old martial artists to show you) but it seemed like weather was never good enough to work on my competition form. It was always either too windy, or too hot, or rainy, or... Also needed will be some work on the one tradition bo form needed for the black belt, Sushi no kon sho. And on top of it all, become more fluid on most my movements. And to top it all, the main reason why I started this blog in the first place, I need to work on my horse stance.... sigh...

Darn it, there's still a lot of work left. It's true when they say it's a journey...

FM

against a knife...

2006-07-28T20:49:00.000-04:00

As I said in yesterday's post, we worked on some self-defense against a knife attack. Everytime we do work against knife attacks, I see as some bonus as it's not in the curriculum of our style below the black belt level. But it's always interesting.

The particular attack we worked against yesterday was the shifty kind. Imagine an attacker walking toward you, kind of looking like nothing is gonna happen then he puts his left hand on your right shoulder and tries to quickly stab you at the stomach level. As an attacker, we all tried to play the part, not to show our hand before the strike. One thing our instructor was quick to point out is how fast the downward block from our left hand must come out in order to deflect the knife to the left of our body, or else, we're in for some damage.

The practice knife with which we worked yesterday was a wooden knife, not the rubbery one we often use and which would bend at the end. Because of its wooden nature, I could feel it when it touched me and was reminded that I had to block even faster.

This morning when I woke up, I was reminded again when I saw a couple of tiny bruises on my belly. I a real street fight, these would have been bad cuts...

Block faster, remember that next time...

FM

Nothing like a good rant...

2006-07-27T21:11:00.000-04:00

...to bring you back to the world of blogging... :)

With the relaxed karate training summer season I'm having, I didn't have much to talk about the last few weeks but tonight, sorry, I gotta let it out.

First my story. I'm in my first of three weeks of vacations, weehee, and as such, I could go to about four classes of karate in a week. That was actually the plan when I looked at this week a couple months ago. Now Monday came and it was humid as all heck and I felt more like relaxing at home with the kids than going to karate so I decided to skip that class. Then Wednesday came. We had guests, my wife's cousin and her daughters. Now, I like them very much, but I probably could have left in the middle of dinner and gone to a 7pm class but instead, at 4:30 I took the decision that I would cook burgers on the grill and would have fun swimming with them instead.

Now tonight, nothig special was planned, it's still very hot and humid but I felt like going, so I went. See, the class is at 6 and usually, it would be near impossible for me to make it without getting a babysitter since my wife usually has a hard time making it home before 6:15, but she too is on vacation this week. There's this young dude who often attends this class and is usually either a tiny bit late, or he cuts it very close. I can understand his situation, his workday ends late and he has a hard time making it, just like me, usually. Now today, we're maybe 7 or 8 getting ready to start class. Class starts, he comes in through the door and our room is right by. We can hear him say aloud "Man was I feeling well by the pool" or something along the lines of it. We've started stretching by then. He goes downstairs to the dressing room and comes back, we've moved to jumping jacks and our instructors is waiting on him to tie his belt and he seems to be having some problems with it when one of his friend tell him that he's late. "Late for what, there's no time to show up" was his stupid reply. He later made a couple comments about some warmup exercises.

Dude, if you don't feel like coming to class, do us all a favor and stay home.

That's all I'll say.

I know some will say our instructor should have said something, or made him/us all pay for his behavior. It's just not the way they do it and frankly, this kind of thing usually never happens.

Why did I tell you the long story of my Monday and my Wednesday. To show how I behaved when I didn't feel like going... I'm not perfect mind you, but I think that if you respect others, they will respect you in the end...

Now on to our regular programming, it's been very quiet lately. Football is over (Andrew's team won the championship :)). Soccer is on a semi-hiatus (no games this week, practices are not always happening, a bit disappointed with it but I take the days off when they come ;)) and did I say, I'm off work for two more weeks :D

Karate wise, I'm not learning much new, at least no new kata, or self-defense techniques. Lots of work on basics, and repetition, and stances. We've worked on hip throws tonight and some technique against a knife trust. Interesting stuff...

Been sporadically working on Sushi no kon sho, our traditional bo kata, but nto enough to really nail it from beginning to end. I've also not worked with my bo too much lately. Took it outside a couple days ago and my wife gave Andrew's bo to Matty, our 2 and a half year old terror. He twirled it around and she shot a little video of it. I should put it on youtube soon and will let you know in here...

For now, take care, I'll be back... sometimes :)

FM

you don't have these for adults, by any chance?

2006-06-27T10:06:00.000-04:00

Last Thursday was Andrew's last day of school. Done is third grade, my oh my does he grow up fast...

With me and my wife both working, and no vacation in sight for at least four more weeks, we had to find a place to "station" Andrew but that was all planned out ahead of time. For the third Summer in the last four years, he will be going to a karate day camp organized by our karate school. They do two hours of karate everyday, split in two sessions. The first hour is traditional class in which they work on their traditional forms, self-defense techniques, kenpo combinations and such and the second hour is always dedicated to some less traditional stuff, things they don't usually work on in their classes. We're talking about open forms and kicks, weapons (he's tried nunchucks, bo, and kamas in the past) or even a full hour of sparring in gears and all.

The afternoon is dedicated to the cool outside the class stuff, where they have all great activities like swimming, rollerblading, movie going when it's raining, all kinds of cool things that kids like.

The first year he went there, he was barely 6 and while he said enjoyed the camp, we figured it was more for the afternoon stuff that the morning stuff. At the time, he was only brushing the surface of what he could do in martial arts but then as the years went by, we came to hear him talk a bit more about the karate part of the day until yesterday where he told me about learning to make a butterfly kick followed by a combination of strikes typical of an open type form. Was way cool to hear him talk about it like that. I asked him if he'd like to do an open form in competition one day and his answer, while not a resolute "heck yeah" was not an absolute no either, a bit similar to what he answered me whe I first talked to him about competing with his bo. Now look at him, he's done 4 bo competitions and he wants more... :)

Hearing him talking about his day, and me knowing about the cool stuff they do is what makes me want to ask them: "you don't have these camps for adults, by any chance?"

FM

almost forgot, huge congrats go to...

2006-06-21T23:33:00.000-04:00

...Michel, Philippe, Carl, Isabelle and Hugues, all fellow adult students at my shcool who passed their black belt Saturday June 10th.

These are guys, and a gal, that I take class with very often. Some of them I see less often, but we do practice together every once in a while and man let me tell ya all, they did impress me the last couple of months. Ever since they learned that they had passed their first kyu, and thus were going to test for the black, they really turned the heat on. Way to go guys, good show!!!

I remember when I passed my 3rd kyu, we were told that the usual time between 3rd kyu and a possible black belt test was at least 18 months. Twelve months to 2nd kyu and the 1st kyu about a month or two before the black belt test (they also call the 1st kyu test the black belt pre-test as it pretty much decides if you are ready or not to test). Well, that 3rd kyu test of mine was 6 months ago. Hard to believe somebody could think I'd be ready to test for the black belt in 12 months from now but seeing them test for the black belt makes me believe I could achieve it someday.

Honestly, it's not a race for me. Not that I'd deliberately delay a testing, but if our instructors say I'm not ready, well, it'll go to whenever it is they say I'm ready. We are a good group of 3rd kyu and even some 2nd kyu now who are practicing together regularly. I know I still have tons to learn before it's time for the big test, but I also know I'm learning a little bit more every time I go to the dojo. I also know that me getting a black belt would be a big motivator for my son, and that alone makes me want to push myself until I'm there and beyond...

FM

going when you can, not when you want

2006-06-21T21:40:00.000-04:00

Well, crazy Summer season is still going on and it's just as the title says, I'm going to class whenever I can, not always when I'd best want to. After finding a babysitter to take care of Matty on Thursdays, I decided starting last week to try to catch the Thursday night class that goes from 6 to 7. This means I have to drop Andrew to his football practice at abotu 5:50 so I can make it to the dojo. The nice thing is that the football field and the dojo are no more than 5 minutes apart, pending red lights and traffic. Anyway, I was able to make it for the first time last week but I don't have much to say about that class, other than I worked some more on Sushi no kon sho. Had to redo the start, as I had forgotten long bits of it, doh.

Last Saturday, my usually cherished two hours in a row were a no go for me. Andrew had a soccer tournament going all weekend long, as well as a football game on Saturday afternoon. We went to soccer in the morning and football in the afternoon, him missing a soccer game to go to football.

I just got back from a rare Wednesday night class, a class I was able to attend since Andrew's soccer coach didn't schedule a practice for tonight. Weehee!!! :) We did something we don't do very often tonight: sparring. Worked on some basics at about half to three quarter speed. Was nice to get some work on that.

I will go to class again tomorrow, making it back to back days of classes for the first time in a long while, then it'll go to, well, I don't know when, since again I won't be able to make the Saturday morning class since Andrew's football schedule is switching to Saturday morning, and after that, I have to go to the airport to pick up my wife who's coming home from a week long business trip to Chicago. Yeah, you read right, I'm Mr Mom this week. A good thing my mother in law is giving me a (very big) hand in watching over Matty whenever Andrew has some activity because I think I would have gone stir crazy without her...

Until later, take care, keep practicing...

FM

Still alive...

2006-06-14T10:16:00.000-04:00

...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

flip gone bad, a video

2006-06-02T23:10:00.000-04:00

After the crazy flips I linked to yesterday, I thought I'd share one of my favorite video clip ever. Man I get back to it about once a month, it's too darn funny...

This is what happens when you're too cocky for your own good

FM

our training ground, our dojo

2006-06-01T22:45:00.000-04:00

Seeing Mat making himself a mini-dojo in his basement, I was reminded of this video I saw the other day. The video is of a young gentleman from Quebec City named Jean-François Robitaille, his website can be found at www.jeffrobitaille.net. He's from our group of school although he trains at the Quebec City one, maybe 25-30 minutes away from me.

He has won numerous big competition and he's very impressive, very acrobatic. In fact, he won the title of world champion in synchro/team forms with a kid who studies at my school, Mathieu Mercier, who's just as impressive. I call him a kid because well, I still see him as a kid ;) but he's a grown man... Mathieu has given class to Andrew a few times in the past, and he's the main teacher of acrobatics and creative/open forms at our school. You can see them both in this picture. Mathieu is the one on his knee and Jeff is the one standing behind him. You can see a video of one of their performances here. Warning, this movie is a good size one (10mb or about) and this is not your usual traditional karate. It's got more acrobatics in it, lots more crazy jumping kicks. You've been warned ;)

Well, and what is the connection between these guys and our dojo, the place where Andrew and I train? Well, there's another video from Jeff's website, a osrt of compilation of Jeff working on his jumps and such. That was shot at the Lévis dojo, that's where we train :) You can find the video here (same warning about size of the video applies to this one). Every scene shown where Jeff is making his crazy spinning jump kicks from in a room with mirrors are from our dojo. The scene where he appears on a stage comes from a show at Paris Bercy, where he took part in a three country demonstration with Daniel Sterling, an American and a Frenchman whom I don't know.

I wanted to share with you all what it looks like at our dojo. The blue mat you see there was put in last Summer. It's about two inches thick like your usual blue mat but the finish is more like a carpet and it stays there all the time, meaning you can make throws, sweeps and takedowns without worrying about your landing, or at least it minimizes the effect that a hard floor could have on you...

FM

disclaimer: all videos and pictures shown in this post are the property of www.jeffrobitaille.net.

You know you had a good workout...

2006-05-30T15:29:00.000-04:00

...when two days later you're sore as all heck simply sitting down and up from the TOILET SEAT :D

Seriously, that's how I felt yesterday. I didn't realize at the time but doing the squats and lunges again in the second hour on Saturday morning really asked that tiny bit more from my muscles that I needed to really work them out. I tell you, my buttocks were screaming everytime I sat down yesterday, especially on the toilet seat and my thighs yelled at me everytime I got up. :D

The good news is that the calf is fine. We even worked them out a bit in each hour of class. You should try this exercise at home too. Assume a good low horse stance first. Then, without your head, or your hips for that matter, going up or doing, lift your heels from the floor so you stand on your tiptoes. Do that a good 25 times, then rest your feet flat on the floor, assuming back the horse stance, and do 25 squats slowly from that position. That was one part of the Saturday morning workout...

Meanwhile, we got some good news in disguise yesterday night after Andrew's soccer game. His coach was unable to find a soccer field that was available for a practice on Wednesday so they won't practice this Wednesday. This means we'll both go to karate class, me at the dojo and Andrew at his usual Wednesday night class at his daytime school. I'll still do two hours on Saturday, as I am a couple of hours behind after missing some classes in the last month. This, coupled to the fact that his soccer coach scheduled the practice for Saturday afternoon does mean that Andrew will miss one practice as he has a football game on that day.

For those who care, they lost 3-4 yesterday but they played very well, especially Andrew. I know, every dad says that about his boy, but I really believe it. It's nice to see how he has matured as whole. I had seen it in his karate, especially in competitions, but I can see it clearly in his soccer playing. He was an 8yo kiddo playing with in the U9 category last year, one of only 3 on a team of 13. I'm not afraid to say it but at times, it made me nervous to see him out on the field, as he looked shaky in the middle of some kids who were clearly more advanced than he was. Also, he plays defense, actually likes playing defense, but when you're a defenseman, if you goof up, you put your keeper at risk. I'm happy to say that this season, it's all the opposite. When I see my Drew step on the field, I feel confident that our defensive zone is safe. He's not perfect and yes he will make mistakes and blunders, but he's more often than not a solid kiddo in the middle of the action whereas last season, he had a tendency to go into "spectator mode" once he had been passed by an opposing forward. This year, the second effort is there and he keeps running to get back to the action as soon as he can. I like that and I make sure to point it out to him once the game is over, so he knows his daddy is proud of him...

I was especially proud when I heard two dads talking to each other and one said to the other something along the lines of "wow, that #8 is pretty solid on defense, not much gets past him". You guessed it, Andrew wears #8. :)

Martial Views: on making mistakes

2006-05-29T15:25:00.000-04:00

Making mistakes, in the broad scheme of things, are good as long as we learn from them, i.e. don't repeat them.

I could have simply commented on John's blog about this entry in his post titled "Experience Is The Best Teacher" but I decided to single it out here because it's one of the most basic things I apply to everything in my daily life.

Be it at work, in karate, in any sport I practice, in my dealings with my sons even, as long as one learns from a mistake, i.e. doesn't repeat it, it's fine by me. I know Matty is too young to understand, but I repeat it endlessly to Andrew, especially after one of his soccer games where I saw him being passed by an opposing forward. I explain to him why the other guy was able to beat him on the dribble and what he could do to prevent it, driving the point that making the mistake wasn't the worst that could happen, but that he should learn from it. I never demand perfection from him, poor kid, just that he does his best every time he steps on the field, or the mat if we're talking about karate, and that if makes a mistake, or if something wrong is brought to is attention, as in a kata when sometimes we don't realize we're doing something wrong, well that he works on correcting it.

I know I'm a very demanding person and I try to be better in my dealings with others, especially with my sons, but if there's one thing I have a hard time accepting, it's somebody making the same mistake(s) over and over. Sometimes it's a training partner lacking control with his/her (although it's more often a him than a her ;)) strikes, but other times it's a coworker lacking rigor in his/her work...

Finally at other times, it's one kid getting on his brother's nerves after you've told him numerous times to stop... Boys will be boys...

FM

good soreness

2006-05-28T10:00:00.000-04:00

Well, I survived that first two hour class yesterday. GO ME!!! :)

I never thought I wouldn't be able to go through it, I mean, I've had belt tests before and they usually are tougher than two one hour class, but still, I had apprehensions. First, these classes were with THE Saturday morning instructor, the most intense of the two I have class with, but it was good, felt good to sweat it out. I did 13 popcorn jumps in the first hour and another 13 in the second hour. We had our usual good workout to start both hours, including lunges and squats aplenty, so much so that my buttocks and thighs are killing me today. Still, that was a good workout and even though I posted recently that I've been feeling in a slump lately, I had fun at the class.

The first hour included some work on kenpo combinations followed with work on the most advanced of my self-defense techniques. I was able to start work on my 3 missing techniques out of the last 12 and finish that work in the second hour.

That second hour was again mostly self-defense work. As I just said, I was able to learn and practice the last three brown belt self defense techniques and it felt good. I finished that hour with some kata work which was some more productive work. I was able to help and be helped by a fellow student. First, we worked out the ending of Cat 2 with her so she could get the steps right in her head and she was able to point out something in my start of the kata by simply asking me a question about one stance I was taking. It made me realize that I was doing it wrong! It's alwasy nice when you realize that you can improve something you are doing and it doesn't always have to be a big thing to do for it to make a difference...

As I said, I feel sore today, but it's a good soreness. Not only did I get a good two hour workout, but when I got back home, I mowed the lawn as if I'd been resting all morning. I was kind of worried I would have problems with my concentration in the second hour, but no, it went quite well. I felt that it was in fact, almost as good a workout for my brain as it was for my body. I had to force it to think while being more tired than usual, and I think that is a positive.

FM