A Lovely Day For Big Bird

There was a break in the heat finally, but I was leaving on vacation today so I wanted to get a little training in before I left so I chose the first hour of class (the black belt session) which is held at Sensei Reed's house.  When the class gets a little big we end up practicing in his front yard.  I guess the old adage would be that the lawn is good training for our feet.  Anyway here's the progress video.

Nothing to brag about, but at least I have a lot of basic movements down.  The big deal is that it's my tenth kata so it's nothing but refinement for the next 8 months.  That and learn the ten bunkai as well.  Right now I can remember maybe one or two.  Stay tuned for a plethora of badly filmed techniques.

Big Bird Six

Last week I was up North for a week of work training, but I was able to practice every day, so I was looking forward to Monday night.  I was assuming that we'd just be working on the last few Katas, but to my surprise we started Hakutsuru, the big daddy of the bird kata. 

I should mention that the heat here in the Thorn city has really taken off.  Thankfully the humidity is relatively low, but it makes traveling to Sensei's house a psychological challenge.  We practice in his garage and under normal circumstances it's fine, but the high temperature make it oven-like.  

So I showed up with my extra water bottles and Reed said let's jump in to work!  

Hakutsuru is the longest of the bird kata and it encompasses all the cool moves from all the other bird katas, making it long and confusing to me.  The beginning of the kata is called the yoy (spelling?).  Its the part where you bow in, but each family of katas is different and unique.  Hakutsuru appears to take a portion of each yoy and layer it on one another.  Our joke was that whoever designed this one was in a pissing contest with the senseis and made his the most fancy he could muster.  

So I got that part sort of under my belt, but struggled with remembering what came next this morning.  I need to practice all the katas so I don't start forgetting.  

Half In The Bag

I certainly came across with a lot of bravado about my retention of the two katas I most recently learned, Ni Pi Po and Rohai Shodan.  That hubris was rewarded with a memory wipe of two or three portions of the katas.  Overweening confidence! How you mock me.

So I was very pumped to get to practice yesterday to cover those gaps.  I jumped right in with Olivia and Reed Sensei and felt pretty good about it.  Olivia coached me through a few gaps while videoing.  

Not as talented as most of the videos out there, but not horrible either.  Maybe in a month or so it'll be a bit better.  

We were also reminded that our testing will occur in April of 2019.  A small change is that it sounds like all the returning blackbelts are also eligible.  Whereas before I thought Olivia was out for another year beyond that, she, Kevin and Terry, might be good to go.