Notes

I wasn’t much of a teacher last night; more of giggler.  Whether it was the flu or an external confluence of events, our class was down to eight.  Even that sounds funny because that used to be such a big number to us.  However, it’s the perfect number for rotation so that was pretty great.  By the end of the night we were having such a good time everyone was laughing.  I wasn’t helping the level of seriousness.

Giant got his gi last night.  Size 7 and still a bit tight.  Dang.  I taught him a take down – capture a punch and pull the arm across the chest, take your other hand and do a jaw strike continue to twist the head and turn your hips.  Uke goes down easy.  He’s so big that he doesn't have to use any effort.  The strength in his torso far exceeds all of us together. 

The 2nd part of class started with some mats out, but we never really went far with that.  However during the warm up I was showing the students how to roll and then slap to arrest the movement and also to practice for taking a throw.  We usually have two lanes of rollers and I missed the lane on one role and had to slap on the floor – bang!  My leg still still hurts today.  Smooth.

Post class note

Class Tuesday was fine and went quick.  I didn’t develop any particular insight into my own skills, but settled in and just participated and taught when asked to.  The newest folks don’t hesitate to ask me on technical matters which I kind of like.

So Teacher calls me up yesterday and tells me that he thought I was doing better with Teaching.  We went into a long discussion about the various students and their skills. 

Unfortunately I still have a long way to go when it comes to teaching.  Teacher has a spontaneous approach to what the lesson might consist of, but he’s been doing it so long a majority of his work is pretty flawless and everything dovetails nicely with the theme of the night.  Mine stuff is pretty basic and pretty bite-sized. 

He ended the conversation with, “I noticed that you seem more relaxed when you’re teaching.”  And that I need to count with more authority.  I guess my quiet wheezing doesn’t motivate the class very well.

Teaching 3

Somewhere between yelping in pain and standing on my toes for the umpteenth time I began to grin.  I had just experienced something naturally without thinking about it.  In our 2nd hour I was teaching one our newest students, Cop, wrist locks and was being constantly interrupted by other students with questions about technique.  It was then I realized I felt comfortable with educating someone else. 

Normally my mental experience is something on par with, “what if they ask me this A – I don’t know A!” and so on, but last night I was able follow my own track so I knew exactly where I was going and just stick to those things.

In retrospect I wish I had a laminated card so I could go over the techniques (wrist and shoulder locks) in some semblance of order.  I feel like I confuse the students because I’m often dredging up memories instead of focusing on the technique at hand. 
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Another class with 15 folks!  The room is packed.  Grinding the basics in is very tiring mentally and physically.  The mental part is just focusing on the weak points in my technique and trying to correct all the new bad habits I’ve picked up.  The physical is that we are trying to slow the technique down and it’s brutal after about 40 reps.  All of the older folks (above 40) were groaning pretty quickly. 

I got paired with this new guy – clearly a giant awkward in his own skin.  I’ve never seen such a big guy with absolutely no physical comfort.  I figured the football team would be absolutely peeing their pants if they met this guy.  We worked on blocking kicks and he seemed comfortable and interested, but jut a horrible stance and no insight into his own body mechanics.  It reminds me of me.

My main partner for exercises for most of the night was Cop.  He showed up in uniform, but before that we had no idea.  Vigorous and inflexible, but with a great attitude.  Phenomenal balance on top of that!  I could block his kicks and he could go back to zenkutsu with no problem. Bastard!  I still struggle with that.

I slept like a log. 

Speech and Teach

Teacher took an unexpected turn Thursday by starting a long speech about Karate/Tang Soo Do.  I’m not sure what spurred that on, but it was nice to see everyone pay attention and try to absorb a bit of history on the art. 

The second half of class included my lesson on crescent kicks.  Thankfully I had talked to teacher for a bit before I started because my normal “get faster as I get stressed” technique appeared to be in check. 

I started everyone off with some front kicks to warm up and then move to a quick speech on the inside crescent.  I keep in same position while they got used to that and then had them move forward with the kick.  Since then they seemed so comfortable we went to outside crescents and I could see right away that that was a more difficult skill to absorb.  I ended up using a pad so they could see where to bring the power in that kick and noticed that several people, although low, could generate a lot of force without losing balance.  Cool!

We ended the class with an advanced technique that required a mat.  It led from our earlier exercises with elbow deflection and attack.  Teacher has us working on moving into an attack quite a bit which is tough for us to learn, but oh so effective.  This time we lead in with an elbow and go to a trip/throw.  Very fun, but my back sure complained about it all night.  I forgot the Ibuprofin.

Lesson 2

Last night was my second attempt at a lesson.  I only had the vaguest idea of what I was going to do, because I figured Teacher was going to keep things basic.  When he split the class in the 2nd hour and placed me with Teacher Slim I definitely didn’t do well.

Teacher Slim, who rarely comes to class anymore, has a very eclectic teaching style.  Basically, whatever comes to him he will teach.  So super advanced technique will be taught hand in hand with some basic skill. 

Teacher Slim also has 4 black belts and is probably pushing 60, but he can snap me like a wet towel so I find “teaching” with him to be very intimidating.  Plus, my teaching style is very methodic and poorly timed.  So together the students in our group has a constant questioning look on their faces. 

-segue-
Teacher asked us a question, “what’s the difference between a professional and a Master?”  I was about to spout out, “the pay,” but held my tongue. 
He said, “the professional will practice the move until he gets it right and the Master practices the move until he never gets it wrong.”  Awesome.

Teacher Slim’s specialties are locks, painful locks, and brutal take downs.  Whereas my specialty is nothing.  Great teaching combo.  Anyway we started with kotegashi (wrist twist) which is fun, but when you work with younger folks with flexible wrists it becomes very difficult.  In steps Teacher Slim.  He introduces the concept of “softening” the opponent.   After locking the wrist up and bringing to your abdomen while turning, bring up your elbow into the face of the Uke and that will help he/she fall down easier.  Needless to say there was a lot of elbow-cheekbone contact, but the Uke does go down.

As the endless hour moved on I realized my anxiety to make a good lesson was being channeled into talking faster and moving faster which translated into a crappy teaching experience.  I really need to breath more and slow up.  Hell, even Teacher will stop and think and no one even blinks about that.

Back to the beginning - again

I can't believe that so much time has gone by since the last post. At least I'm going to class regularly again, but (I'm having a hard time remembering to post the next day and then class comes up again and I forgot what I was going to write about.

After I got back from vacation I was in for a surprise. Teacher warned me, but I still couldn't believe it. Our class ranks have swelled unbelievably. For the first time our class has a consistent number of members (around 14). In repsonse Teacher has stepped up his game on teaching. He's become more concise, more timely and impressive in his ability to match the class to the general skill level of everyone. I find myself a bit bored and then force myself to focus on my form and movement. The classes are flying bye at incredible speed.

Now that I'm trying to teach segments I'm finding that matching to the class is incredibly difficult. I came somewhat prepared to work on breakfalls and basic slaps, but Teacher looked at the class that was big as hell and filled with too many new folks and said maybe next week. I realized then that until the bulk of folks get the handle on blocks and kicks taking falls is going to be a ways off. There isn't going to be any sparring for awhile either. Sad face.

So it appears to me that I'll be working on the basics with everyone else and also teaching the same as well.

After Teacher and I had our discussion about being more assertive I've taking a more forward approach to the class. Having mostly new folks makes this easy and that makes correcting my long-time classmates a lot easier too. Maybe this growth will come along after all. I still find myself going over incidents and wondering if I would have handled it differently. Being assertive in real life is a significant change in the way I've handled myself so I see this as a long term project.

Lessons

I’m very behind in writing because life is complicated, but I just wanted to jot down a few notes about my last class.  I talked with Teacher about doing a section in class as he had suggested.  I picked side-kicks and told him what I’d be doing.  I took up a majority of the 2nd hour, but it felt like a longer time.  It’s tiring to do all the thinking as well as the work.

The lesson:
- side kicks
- side kick with step behind
- water dummy practice
- partner drills

The first three were pretty good, but the partner drills were pretty crappy.  We really needed folks of similar height and flexibility to start off, but it didn’t go that way.   Short, tall, flexible, not – argh!