Private Class 1

I heard a mountain climber describe a syndrome in which his leg would twitch in an uncontrollable fashion - it was called "sewing machine leg." After so much tension is placed upon the muscle in one position it begins to fail in a spectacular fashion.

I occasionally struggle with what Teacher presents to me to learn, so it was some trepidation that I went to our private session on Sunday. I was a bit concerned with his focus on my stance. Privately I was wishing for something a little more exotic and was thinking that stances were probably the last thing I needed to work on, but always the dutiful student I knuckled down and smiled through the work.

To my surprise he pointed out incredibly helpful stuff pulled from the first kata/hyung. The low stance he demonstrated and I tried to emulate was extremely difficult for me. Over the years I have, as he put so gently, adopted a bent kneed lean. So we did work in the mirrors that had me gritting my teeth, sweating profusely and getting a terrible case of sewing machine legs.

The biggest lesson was as I lower my stance my center of balance shifts. I'm now emulating a new student because, I guess in reality, I am one again.

Flying Chokes

I believe I'm becoming a connoisseur of chokes. I think it was the 10th or 12th time last night where the incessant adolescent giggling started kicking in following the adrenaline kick that attends the end of the tunnel which we call consciousness.

I hate missing class now. Teacher has been motivated lately to show us some more advanced moves and Me and Cook are eating it up with a spoon. So being gone for a week to visit the parents was tough in two ways - I missed class and I fell behind on a couple of new moves.

Teacher is actually building on skills from class to class in a regular fashion!

The three moves we did last night:
Uki makes the punch. At the same time shoot to the outside of punch. Rotate so your back to back. During rotation curl hand behind to face and drive chin up and then down. Uki goes boom.

Uki makes the punch (right hand). Tori makes right hand outside capture at wrist. Tori drives left hand up under Uki's arm and goes to back of neck on Uki. With a rotation of position, pull Uki's arm up and head down. Then Pick up closest leg and wrap around Uki's head and simply step down. Uki goes down or rolls out.

Uki makes the punch. Tori passes to outside and wraps his arm around neck and punching arm in downward posture (unusual catch). Forearm to neck on grab to start choke. Tori sits down to start tominagi (sp?) and Uki flips onto back. Tori scissors legs and lays on Uki's shoulder and head completing choke.

Today my neck feels like it has a 2nd degree burn all away around, but it was an awesome way to get it. I've got to get video of this stuff because I can't describe it save my life!

Off Thursday because I'm flying over to the mainland for work. Next week!

Technical aspects

Nothing really funny or overwhelming noteworthy, but we had an awesome time. A total time slip. We started out with a combo exercise after doing kicks for a half hour. The roundhouse still frustrates me to no end, but that's what the practice is for. I'll definitely have to do that on my own more often. I've been working on side kicks for so long that all others got rusty.

So the combo was an upward block (jo dan) combined with a punch to the solar p that then moved to a neck grab to knee strike. Executed smoothly you get the feeling that the other person would never know what hit them. I had to learn a few things around this combo. First, go as low I can on the strike so I can use the upward block to keep uki's arm up. Then, second, keep my elbows up as I slide my hands in for the neck head grab to further my control of uki's arms in the short time I'm doing the move. I have a tendency to keep my arms down, since we've been taught that so often, it's now become hard to do anything different. And, third, when grabbing the head for a knee strike, you're actually grabbing the neck with fingernails down with slightly interlocked fingers. You don't even have to use muscle as it naturally guides the uki's head forward to the proper kneeing position.

So I learned that the harder I strain for the knee shot the shorter my stroke it. The more I relax for the strike the higher I bring my knee up. It was like a full foot difference -wow.

Cook asked Teacher about practical sword use. I was intrigued because we rarely bring out the weapons and this seemed interesting. Teacher used the common sword draw hand movement and turned it into a self defense move. Uki sticks a gun or knife in your kidney and you do the sword draw. Basically, you reach across with opposite hand, take their hand (making sure not to get stabbed or shot) and do the draw. This brings their locked wrist/hand up and over your head and then as you move down in the "strike" position Uki must roll or flip to exit a very painful wrist/elbow/shoulder lock. Fun as hell. It's like all those dumb movie stunt man moves that requires the stunt man to do all the work while tori effortlessly moves out of the way.

I only said "I'm sorry" five times this evening. I made sure that I was making contact and that I was doing it correctly. Day one of the new me.

Bassei

In TSD Bassei is supposed to be the last kata before black belt, but our school is not hung up about that kind of thing. However, I've been itching to learn something new after doing the first 8 katas for years now. So I've taken it upon myself to learn Bassei on my own and then broach the subject with Sensei.

I suspect I'm breaching protocol here and I haven't really learned the whole thing (it's got like 60+ moves), but I have to approach Teacher and make sure I'm not being an overreaching ass.

Beyond the protocol issue Bassei is pretty cool, but learning from video is brutal. Constant rewinding and then writing it down makes me dream about it. However, practically, I feel like I'm learning the first kata over again because of the lack of flow I feel.