Pulled Muscles That I Don't Know The Name Of

As a follow up from Monday I'm still plagued with the issue that I'm fairly out of shape.  In my defense we don't often do a lot of basics due to test prep, but that's changed and it was a shock to the system.  

At blackbelt class (before the regular evening adult class) Olivia and I went over Gekisai Dai Ichi and went on to learn Ni since they share most of the same moves.  We followed that up with the Bunkai.  I'm pretty proud of the fact that we learned it as fast as we have even though it's fairly elementary.  The bunkai causes me more problems but even that was going fairly well by the end of adult class.

I'm scheduled to learn the Kyoku kata with a high school guy named Cooper.  This will make my plate very full indeed, at least for that first year or so.  However, my focus immediately turned to the warm up.  This is usually by-passed because were all working out in the blackbelt class the hour before.  To add insult to injury my wife has been learning to become a yoga instructor and we thought we'd run through a routine just before I left for class and it left my legs like rubber.  So much for warming up.  

Daniel had us do kicking drills for only ten minutes.  In just ten minutes I managed to pull/frog the thigh muscles in my left leg.  What a softy!  This morning was met with the worst pain just trying to get out of bed.  Not fun.  I was able to run through the kata this morning, but I'm really enjoying sitting still.

Fresh Look

As a celebration I decided to try another theme for awhile.  I hadn't realized so much time had passed since I last posted so when I sat down to type I thought it might be nice to have a small change.  

The last month was pretty much a write off in terms of classes and practice.  I got to go to two classes right after the exam and then work had me travel until class last night.  I was feeling pretty out of shape and pretty soft, but the treat of completing a rank is that you get to learn something new!  

My current plan for my third degree is incredible aggressive.  I have to learn twelve kata with the bunkai in three years, but I also have to learn 5 kyoku kata on the side.  These are the school only kata that are not shared outside, but a brown belt needs to know them all before they achieve blackbelt.  My job is to learn those as well because my blackbelt was acknowledged from my old school, but it left me without some fundamentals.  They are actually seven Kyokus, but the first five are supposedly elementary, the sixth is for the confirmation exam a year after the blackbelt is awarded and the seventh is supposed be for fourth degree and above.  

So I was pretty excited about going to class last night, but really didn't understand how quickly I'd gotten out of shape.  I wasn't out of breath, but my muscles felt slack and warm up basics that required lots of blocking showed me that my desensitization has long since passed.  I was squirming in pain a lot.  

The good bit was that I got to learn Gekisai Dai Ichi.  I had learned it four years ago in order to help MaryAnn.  Back then I was just helping people out with whatever.  MaryAnn was learning and she was best doing it by teaching others what she was learning.  

It wasn't that I remembered it well, but I remember the basics.  It's a fairly simple pattern to remember, but leave it to me to make something more complicated than it is.  We also went through the bunkai which generally speaking, is easy, but there is a lot of moving parts.  

Here's a slow and fast breakdown of the kata: