Sunday, February 24, 2008

Private Lesson 5

Each refinement knocks a piece away from the bad form or bad balance. For a moment I felt like a sculpture and Teacher was the artist slowly chiseling away the imperfections. That is until my legs got too tired to hold me up anymore. When the legs tire I tend to stand up and and then my balance goes to hell. So we had great progress while I was fresh, but as I got tired we had to move on to the next thing more frequently.

In O Dan there is a transition that requires me to switch to the hind leg and then come around with a crescent kick which is complimented with a downward block. This is challenging to me because if I don't do it correctly, my body spins past the desired end point. So today we worked on where I'm looking and keeping my head up. Two simple things that erased a lot of problems.

After that we went to knife attacks. I realized as he got the bowie knife out how I really dislike these exercises. I mean I know why I don't like them - I'm not great at the defense and these are the most likely to occur in our town which adds an aspect of unwanted realism.

To my surprise I was able to go through about six that really worked well and a few that are really fantastic. These attacks are based on a straight forward thrust and slashing. Nothing to do with someone who knows how to really fight with a knife. So my confidence got a boost, but I had to take a lot of shots in the belly before I really started moving my torso.

4 comments:

Mathieu said...

Yay for learning!

-ichigan - first the eyes
-nisoku - two the feet
-santan - three stomach (or guts or bravery or determination)
-shiriki - Strengh in techniques

Knife defense is fun. It's time to improvise. I find that knee strikes became quite handy while dealing with teacher trying to strike me.

:D

have fun!

Meg said...

Oh Dan is a lot of fun!! I know exactly what move you're talking about too!!!

Potatoe Fist said...

Now that I have practiced this a whole bunch more my balance is coming back, but I have the sneaking suspicion if this is brought up at test the adrenaline will knock my balance off anyway.

I also noticed that this seems like a small area hyung. When I first learned it I could have sworn I took the whole room up.

Meg said...

No, it's a lot smaller than it seems when you're first learning. Oh Dan and Sip Soo are two of my favorite forms. I just refreshed my memory on Oh Dan the other day because I hadn't done it for a while (not since the last belt test in September!) and needed the practice.

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