Rebuild 2

I came in a bit early and worked on my katas and generally warmed up.  Olivia returned, potentially swelling our ranks to one more person.  And then the surprise was that Charlotte (a four year old?) was joined by her mother, Sarah.  She decided to join the class.  She came from a Kyoshukin school and was asking me questions.  We both came to the conclusion that the lack of sparring and hard contact exercises was probably a good thing.  I based that on the fact that I don't have regular injuries or trips to the doctor at all.  So kind of sad and kind of nice.


The basics we worked on were knife hand and stance differentiation.  Because Shudokan borrows from other schools, they want to pay respect by doing technique as that school does.  To this end bow ins, stances and movement are all to mirror the founding school.  So we often come across with all kinds of things that tend to be very specific. 


For example, we learned the difference between fudo dachi and shiko dachi.  Two different schools that are similar, but neither uses both.  Fudo puts the feet into a "L" shape.  Whereas Shiko places the feet 120 degrees. 


We practice Fudo and then added the knife hand strike.  After flailing about for awhile we actually appeared to smooth out after awhile. It was learning to walk and chew gum all over again.  I assume that only my massive years of experience allowed me to do it without falling on my face.  Hah!


We finished up with escapes from front choke attempts.  The more advanced technique ended up in a standing guillotine.  My neck is still tender from a few weeks ago (exacerbated by chopping wood) so I was a bit nervous.  Thankfully my youthful companion decided not to joist down on my neck.