Thursday, April 21, 2016

Celebration Preperation

I like getting to class early and that usually gives me some time to do a bit of early warmup to loosen up.  I sit most of the day and jumping into class can be a bit stressful on my tight tendons and muscles.  This also means that I occasionally get to lead the warmup which I enjoy, but I can't always remember the sequence of exercises.  With the introduction of the hancho(?) exercises, I put those into practice when ever I get the chance.  And everyone seems to enjoy them.

On this particular occasion Sensei had to get some Gi pants for our new guy Ed.  Ed is on the shorter side, but built like a anthropomorphized beer-keg.  So finding clothes to fit him has been entertaining to watch.  His pants are way too long and are now rolled up to his knees. But, at least, he can kick now.

The term testing is really only used with Black belt level exams.  Sub Black belt testing is called Celebration - A demonstration of techniques, kata and application.  I'm unused to this format, so I'm often looking over my shoulder to figure out what's going on.  It's seems basic, but since I don't know what's next or what I'm doing it's a bit of a challenge. 

It starts off with basic technique, but everyone does it at the same time. The only difference being that as your level of experience moves up, your technical skill needs to be shown at the same level.   So we do kicks and punches and then three kata.  After that we did an application of the Pinan Sandan kata, but I'm not sure that'll be in the Celebration, but was fun to get all the creaking old folks to move around a bit.

On the diet front - I weighed in at 199 this morning.  This is about as low as I can get with my regular diet, but that always allowed way more crappy food.  Now that I've joined my wife on the anti-inflammation diet I'm really hopeful to see that number drop down to 195 (which I haven't seen in many years).  The biggest part of this being the lack of dairy, most carbs and sadly beer.  We'll see how low I can go by next Wednesday.

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