Note to Self

I woke up this morning with a lot of energy. Not the good kind. I woke up angry and I have no idea what is creating that feeling. However, energy is energy and I took advantage of it. I did a bunch of chores around the house, but no matter what I did it didn't seem to abate the flow. So I figured I'd do a session at home to see if it would burn my calories or whatever down a bit.

I couldn't go running today because my legs are trashed from running yesterday. Why not pretend to do a class and loosen myself up a bit? So I did. I ran through the warmups and did 10 or so of every kick I could think of. And then I did all of my kata/hyung. The hour went by quickly and I'm sweating more than I thought possible for a home work out.

Unfortunately/fortunately, I've still got a lot of energy yet, but I'm feeling a little more mentally centered. Plus my wife was excited that I vacuumed the house and did the laundry. I guess a win/win.

General Notes

Teacher called me up and told me that he pulled a muscle in his neck or shoulder and could barely move his neck, so I told him I'd lead as much of the class as he needed. When I got home from work I hurriedly wrote an outline of the class that we barely even used. He was able to set up the hour and only used a smidgen of my stuff for the second. I was going with the advanced stuff too much, but he liked all the kicking things I laid out.

I didn't get around to posting last week because I couldn't think of anything of note the next day. If work gets too busy in the morning then I can't think of things later in the day. I guess blogging in the evening is as good as it gets for me.

The constant stream of new people constantly impresses me. Teacher absolutely does not advertise at all and yet by word of mouth we have two or three new people every couple of months. Our current hardcore membership consists of the Wonder Twins, Robot, Little Sister and once a week, Beard and Trucker. The new folks are High School aged folks and the newest is guy works on a boat so he'll be an occasional.

The reason I mention this is that I often get placed with the new people so I can teach them or be generally helpful. The latest batch of folks is fairly physically adept so they are pleasant to teach or correct. I used to get bitter because I was so worried that I wasn't working on advance skills that I'd end up forgetting them. Now that the Twins are up to speed I get to show them all the stuff I learned which in turn helps me iron those exact moves out in myself.

I'll be going on vacation in June - how will they get along without me?

Niiiicce

My feet were well above my face and I hadn't even started falling yet. The execution was so smooth that the Wonder twin hadn't even started moving me into the throw. When I did land it was like coming out of a hip throw and I did it like a rockstar.

Both twins were laughing. Apparently when I'm in the moment and the moment is great I say, "niiice." In this case I was still in the air when it happened.

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Teacher has this move that is totally not in the manual at all. I'm not even sure what it is attributed to, but it's effective - I call it the elvis. It's a leg hook - where you are calf to calf, but you are standing on your tip toes as far into the stance as you can get - then you plant your foot quickly and your opponent has to do a deep split or in my case roll back into a slap.

As class progressed Teacher would pull half the class out to work on realistic attacks - in this case stairs. While he did that I would would work on the elvis. As he left the room for the stairs he said and do whatever would go after that. I was able to squeeze in a progression from the manual and worked in a throw. I am awesome.

The final move was a block followed by a roundhouse to the gut. Instead of going back to the original stance you moved in to the leg hook and do an elvis followed by a slight torso throw. It turned out great.

I was all aglow when I got home tonight. I had to give a credit to my wife since I had approached her earlier on some one-step sparring ideas. She promptly punched me in the face. Smooth as always.

Heat

There is this moment of sickness.

It's usually followed a moment of physical weakness.

And then it's go time. Over the years I've developed a love hate relationship with the adrenaline shock that accompanies the few moments before sparring. It used to be fear straight up and then it turned into excitement, but along the way it contained all kinds of combinations of both. Where am I now? Hard to say, but tonight I feel like I have a fire lit inside my torso. I presume it's the long, lingering effects of hormones, adrenaline, cortisone and whatever the body generates when it's firing on all cylinders.

Needless to say, this evening was a good class. Trucker was going to get tested on his green belt and there was no new folks in class so Teacher started us off on long complicated sequences to warm us up. We ended up the first hour kicking three ways and trying to find power on that third one is very difficult when you try to be fast.

The second hour started with a few drills and went into multiple attacks. I love these, and not because I'm good at them. I think they represent the most realistic venue for testing skills and thinking on the fly. And that's even with "rules" put in place to slow things down. So we did a 3 on 1 drill and that migrated over to sparring.

I volunteered to go first and started with one Wonder twin and set the pace at high speed. That was a poor choice because although he can move that quick he isn't that polished. We started off with a brutal double shin kick and almost immediately followed it with a fist to fist contact. Ouch!

I took a break and then had to fight the other twin. We had a more stately pace, but I ended that with a crescent to his head.

Finally I got to spar with Teacher, but it was a specific one. It was where we only use elbows. I can't get beyond his defense, but I've got more muscle and height on him. This never helps me out though. He slid in three big punches that made me grunt and squeak at the same time. The class was left laughing.

Along time ago I feared being the subject of Teacher's attention. I was afraid of the pain involved in demonstrations. Then I was proud because I thought he looked at me and thought I could take it. Then I realized I was a good example because I am so much bigger than him. Then I realized he wants he techniques to look crisp and he knows I will make him look good. After sparring I realized it all these things, plus I am just plain fun to take a beating to.

Not Right

There is a simple shoulder lock that we teach the new folks to get them used to the idea that muscle is a poor substitute for technique.  Basically you capture the wrist, rotate the arm and as the person passes by you move the locked arm into the upright position forcing that person to bend over or experience pain in the shoulder and wrist. 

I’m in the middle of “monkey in the middle” at the tail end of class where we’ve been reviewing our locks.  The idea is that you try it with everyone giving you an idea of what works with different heights, lengths of arms and skill levels. 

Everybody gets a chance to be the Monkey and eventually I get up to the head of the line and one of my first people is Little Sister.  Little Sister is notorious in that no lock can be put on her.  Everybody has a spot that locks them out of course, but she’s only got one and it’s difficult to get her there.  She is a veritable rubber man.  I can’t believe how easy this is to forget, yet I do it over and over.  On this occasion I presumed that a shoulder lock would work just fine.  I actually knew the wrist lock was a failure as soon as I got a hold of her arm, but I went through the motions smoothly.  Little Sister looked up at me when I confidently had her in position – which is to say that she was bent at the waist and her arm was pointed up at 45 degree position behind her – and then stood up straight while her arm rotated in the socket even farther up.  The only thing that ran through my mind was my old G.I. Joe doll.  Somehow when they designed it they left out any possibility of normal shoulder rotation, giving the children of America an unrealistic idea of the limitations of the body (not to mention the lack of genitals). 

Long story short  - I thought I for a second that I was going to be sick and since I wasn’t I immediately made fake retching sounds and dropped her arm like a hot iron.  My discomfort made the class piddle themselves in hilarity.  I actually had the Wonder Twins on the floor laughing. 

Another incident of fine teaching.

Mini Revelation

I was reading Mat's Way this afternoon and left a comment how sometimes I felt it was hard to express things in class when there is only small revelations every once in a while. Those are interspersed with hours of labor perfecting technique and trying to learn new things.

I remember when everything was new and it was a tremendous effort to sift through everything I was learning in order get to settle in my brain. Now so much of it is rote so I can focus on the nuances. I was struggling to describe in posts past, but tonight I got a metaphor pop in my brain.

I realized that every night that I go to class it's like the first time learning technique, but I have all the skills and didn't realize it. It's like now I'm the first time natural will all the gifts, but I also have the gift to see what's wrong in others and myself without being critical.

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Teacher asked me to teach our sixth Kata/Hyung tonight. I must say that it went very well and as a class with had a beautiful synchronisity to our movements. At one point during our kicking drills we all knew that we in synch and balanced as well. You could feel it extending to the new students and it seemed to carry on throughout the class.

Sweet.

PPT

Piss Poor Teaching.

I talked with Teacher before class and reminded myself of to work on the slowness I needed and focus on fundamentals.  However, after mentoring a new guy (Hippie) for the first hour I was feeling unusually good about my segment in the 2nd hour. 

My part was on the Cat stance.  I reviewed all of our stances in Japanese (because I can’t remember the chases – Hu Gul in this case).  I gave a brief introduction foot placement, weight placement, etc.  We practiced movement back and forth and everyone looked pretty good doing it.  I threw in front snaps kicks and finally got to the double knife hand (Mahk ki something something) over the lead leg.  We got so good at this I started cracking jokes.  As soon as I did this I started mentally cursing myself for making said jokes.  Not that they were bad, but I told myself I wouldn’t, but as soon as I did it the mental cursing messed me up. 

I didn’t have the heart to talk to teacher afterwards.  So last night I had terrible nightmares of teaching, messing things up and never really get lessons started because I was bogged down in all the little things.  Damn, I’m neurotic. 

The Soreness

I’m so sore that moving my arms makes it feel as if I’m tearing scabs off my biceps.  The combination of beatings and the gym is absolutely punishing me to the core.  Ironically I think it’s the beatings that causing me the most anguish.  If I sit for more than an hour my legs completely stiffen up and make walking an awkward drunkards stumble until my hips loosen up. 

As usual the internal griping and whining disappears after we have warmed up and started moving.  I was actually dreading leading the warm ups because of this, but Teacher chose Little Sister to run that portion.  I was never so thankful.  Of course later in class we did side kicks for a half hour and I almost barfed from the agony of keeping the ground leg bent and kicking slowly. 

For some reason the class moved very slowly in time and we were able to pack in a huge amount of content.  Teacher continued to drill on the beginning techniques for the benefit of the new students, but I found a great deal of comfort in focusing on the basics.  I’m finding that I’m pleased that I can remember the odds and ends that he normally teaches and then apply them to myself.

The 2nd hour was dedicated to kata/hyungs.  That really beat the legs up.  He stopped us at one point and had us practice our kihap.  We all sounded pretty lame in the beginning, but we sounded great after we got going again.  There is nothing like everyone being in unison and belting out, “Hai!”

The last 15 minutes was dedicated to a bit of slow sparring.  I say slow because that’s all I was capable of.  I got paired with Robot and the sure signs of Rust were on both of us.  He has a horrible habit of catching my kicks which is nice when we are slow, but leaves him open in all sorts of ways.  Last night he did the same thing, but when I started to say something he kept his balance and planted a nice kick in my crotch.  I guess I need to amend my opinion or move a bit quicker. 

In the last bout Teacher brought me up and give some pointers to the class with me as the dummy.  When we did get going I was able to keep moving fairly well, but I noticed that my eyes were closed more often than not.  Too many fingers and elbows were making me nervous.  Beard complimented me on my technical acumen, but then chided me for taking it easy with Robot.  I guess I can’t win! 

Rust and Nails

After 6 weeks of no class (ha ha) last night was a welcome diversion from lazy evenings at home.  Not that I’m opposed to that, but the sofa and I have a long relationship and I need my space. 

During the time Teacher has been gone I’ve been diligent about working out regularly assuming that I’d been in reasonable shape for this week.  This assumption has proven to be incorrect more often than not and last night was no exception to that rule.  We were practicing simple punch and block with movement and after three or four runs up and down the hall I was getting more and more out of breath.  Due to the numbers I was able to step out of rotation and help correct form and stance in the others and catch my breath.  Teacher came up to me and I whispered in his ear, “man, we look really rusty!”  He laughed because it was true.  There was not even an ounce of smoothness in any of us.  Our class looked like absolute beginners. 

So we struggled through the basics for two hours.  Mostly bad balance and shaking legs betraying the fact that none of us had practiced this specifically. 

After working on basic movement for awhile Teacher asked who had the lowest stance.  I looked around and pointed out two students who looked pretty good.  He said nope.  It was the two guys that had already turned around and headed back in our direction.  I screamed, “cheaters!” 

To finish the class Teacher decided to do a little knife defense.  I assume this was to show off a bit to the new students.  He took a different approach and let us suffer a bit, by letting us try to recall our moves on our own.  I was really pleased to learn that I could recall the few very important lessons from just before break and thought I was pretty smooth considering the shakes.

Just before the end of class Teacher asked me to the front for demo time.  He then showed the class what their options were from the variety of attacks one could expect from a knife wielder.  I’ve never been in a knife fight and nor do I want to be so I’m sure hopeful that the stuff we are practicing has some semblance to what we could expect.  So while Teacher is throwing me around, locking me out, and otherwise abusing me in front of the class he told us the story of the police officer here in town that got stabbed 13 times.  The officer thought he got punched and almost bled out because the attacker didn’t slash – he just punched with the blade. 

While letting that soak in he demonstrated an arm capture with spinning back fist.  As he spun around his heel peeled up my big toe nail.  Not wanting to look any worse a weenie than I normally do I just pursed my lips and gritted my teeth for the rest of class.  Ouch.  Bloody toe again. 

Dance fool

Teacher got back from vacation last week and aside from the tan was pretty much the same as always. I guess I thought he was going to be brimming with philosophy after laying on the beach for a month. He had me over for dinner and had pretty much picked where he left off.

So he settled in and had me come in for an early workout. He had some ideas about how to improve my transitional movements. I realize that I'm clunky most of the time so I was intrigued with what he come up with. While I warmed up he started playing with the stereo for a bit. I thought that was a intriguing way to start things off, but he demonstrated using the music's tempo to dictate the pace or beat of the movement.

So it wasn't exactly kata/hyung, or dancing, but it was fun jumping around to the beat of the drum as it were. I was hoping, "everyone was kung fu fighting" would come on.

After 20 minutes of looking we were background players in a rock video from the 90s we started sparring using soft method. I find this difficult after years of hard style. It feels like being back in wing chun and doing chi sao drills. However this was great exercise and time flew by. The only problem was that I was prodigiously sore the next day. The combo of gym and beatings takes its toll.

Teaching the knife.

“How do you deal with a knife attack?” Teacher asked the class.  He then broke us up into groups and directed me to three of the up and coming guys, Robot and the Wonder Twins. 

I inwardly gulped because this is definitely not one of my strong points.  I keep running the moves realistically in my head and became very anxious about confronting a knife-wielder.   This comes from practical practice.  I usually get poked in the belly or sliced somewhere sensitive when we practice with our wood knives.  Tuesday was no exception for a few of our students.  Pin point bruises and a scalp laceration were the definite highlights. 

So there I am trying to run through all the techniques and the guys I’m with are pointing out everything wrong with what I’m doing.  Thankfully Teacher came up and cleared up some basic things for me.  I was teaching them out right wrist captures – which I think we can all agree on is pretty close to impossible in most instances.  Teacher showed us the bigger block on the forearm that lead to a capture a second later.  Obviously something that needs pictures to explain, but as soon as we did it everybody in my group went, “ahhhh.”  The universal sign of understanding concept and action all at once. 

Even though my teaching was sub par I did feel a moment of pride in being able to remember 90% of the basic techniques –even Teacher did a small ahhh over things he’d forgotten. 

Robots and Movies

Teacher leans over to me at half time and whispers, “I’m going to test the Wonder Twins tonight, but first we’re going to do some sparring to tire them out.”  While they get put through their paces Teacher leans over to me and whispers again, “I’m going to put you with Robot.  Just take it easy because he’s never done this kind of thing before.” 

The class theme before sparring was infighting and developing some comfort with elbows and targets up close. 

Robot and I bow to each other and he immediately gets inside my arms and legs and begins to thrash me.  Since we were in hugging distance he kept throwing knees into my thighs – unfortunately for me, they were accurate and effective.  I tried to step into him to throw him off his pace and his knee painfully collided with mine. 

The reason I call him Robot is that he had his knee replaced with a titanium one about 15 years ago due to cancer. 

What this meant to me is that his knee strikes are incredibly effective because he doesn’t have pain there whereas the next day I have a bruise on the knee cap.  Ouch.

Not to be outdone I decided to back out and use my kicks.  I tried a roundhouse and he caught it (beginners mistake) so I twisted my hips over farther and gently slapped him on the face with the top of my foot.  Awesome!  I got a lot of laughs and some respect with that one. 
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While basking in the glow of a nice sparring session I noticed that the students were really doing a great job at blocking and kicking.  Much to my chagrin I realized considering their time in and level that they were much better than I was. 

I go through this occasionally – a moment where I see new folks performing so much better than I ever could and realize that I’m not gifted athletically; that everything I ever learned was hard won and never a natural feeling. 

I saw this boxing movie a long time ago which may have starred Wesley Snipes, where a young white guy and young black guy apprentice to a Russian drunk guy.  We find out that the Russian was an incredibly gifted boxer that had dreams, but they played out when he defected to the states.  So he teaches the guys – living his dreams though them.  Anyway Wesley is incredibly gifted and the white guy brings nothing to the table, but always has the will to do better.  They both end up getting close to the Olympics and Wesley gets cut in a street fight.  So white boy gets on the team (because we knew he wouldn’t make it originally) and, of course, wins the gold. 

I can’t help drawing comparisons to myself.  Not that I’m going to the Olympics or anything, but I know I’m not gifted in any sense – I just happen to be the guy that goes to class forever.  That’s not even saying much either.  I’m the guy that goes to class forever because I have an unencumbered life. 

I don’t mean to have a pity party, because I’m proud of the things I have achieved, but to see people that will easily surpass my dreams of physical achievement sometimes stings.  

Jumping

I normally like to start my posts with a humorous anecdote about some aspect of class, but I’m so sleepy I don’t have it in me.  I’m on day four of heavily interrupted sleep.  Long story short – life with geriatric, stroke-addled cats is brutal.

I haven’t been posting much lately because I either keep forgetting what we did the night before or I can’t think of pithy things to write about.  However, last night had a brief change in the regular goings on.  One of the Wonder Twins asked about jumping kicks which progressed from the crescent kicks we were practicing to a whole room of uncoordinated jumping, twisting and groaning. 

I usually leave this kind of analysis to Colin or Mark, but trying to sort out the body dynamics for this kick was dizzying. The kick is a jumping outside crescent, by that I mean that the right foot (in this case) comes in from the right and the striking surface is the bottom/arch of the foot.  With the jump added we pump the left knee into the air to launch before we perform the kick.  We could all do that via a huge twist in the torso (leaving my back incredibly sore this morning).  Teacher added a level of complexity to this – coming down from the landing with spinning back fist.  To do this the left leg had to not only pump into the air but also in the direction you needed you body to move (in this case up and to the left).  This was to mitigate the need to twist the torso in mid air.  We were horrible.  It was the proverbial bunch of monkeys humping a football.  Something to practice obviously since we never practice jumping kicks, even though they are part of the TSD curriculum.  Teacher is very uncomfortable teaching the techniques because they leave the floor and source of power. 

The rest of the night was practicing wrist-twist, four corners throw and various locks and basic throws.  Lots of fun now that I can teach a bit better and have the Wonder Twins to utilize as ukes. 

At the end of class we have one student stand while the rest us get in line and present as the uke. The student practices what they learned that evening.  I saw the frustration in everyone’s faces and even I would lock up when folks would offer a left hand. 

Teacher had everyone sit down and had me demonstrate Neihanshi Cho Dan before bow out.  Not sure why, but it was a nice treat to show everyone what I was working on.

Throat Punches and Child Beatings

Throat punching, unlike its cousin throat singing, is neither relaxing or melodic with zen-like sparseness.  I found this out while sparring with one of the wonder twins.  Apparently, I thought it was technically proficient to block with my adam’s apple.  As with many of my technical failure’s in combat I felt a sudden desire to sit down right in the middle of everything because my throat had become the center of the universe. 

Somehow I managed to keep it together and push my eyes back into my head and regurgitate the important parts of my throat back into their relative places. 

By the next class I was able to make noises similar to an old cat that simply doesn’t have enough lung capacity to meow coupled with a honking squeak. 
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I ended up not having to teach a full kids class after all.  Teacher was able to get back, but when I showed up later he looked completely asleep and couldn’t count to save his life. 
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Last night was a big blocking night.  My forearms look like a rough stretch of road and I can’t set them on anything due to the tenderness.
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The computer guy from down the hall poked his head in my office and said, “so I hear a 16 year old girl kicked you ass.”  Why is this a repetitive theme in my life?  Then he says, “I hear your going to be testing for your Black Belt soon.”  How is it that everyone knows this before me?

I take solace in the fact that the I heard that kind of thing for my Brown for a really long time before the test occurred.  I’m just not anxious to take that kind of beating anytime soon.

You know things are desperate when there is absolutely no pretense in how you try to control your breathing – just sucking huge breaths, gi completely disheveled, belt around to the side, etc.  Not very elegant – that’s me in testing.

Kids 2 / Lessons Learned

I literally have too much too write about.   I learned so much in one evening that I think it would take several hours to get it all down.

Last night was my 2nd evening with the kids class and it went fairly well.  Teacher made an effort to remove himself from the class frequently so see how I’d handle the normal escalation of energy the kids normally exhibit.  It seemed to go pretty good!  I would take a second to stop someone off task or just get back to exercises – it wasn’t exhausting and I never lost patience and the hour went by very fast. 

Adult class was extremely small.  Just the wonder twins and Little Sister.  The first hour was mostly discussion and a small amount of practical work.  Teacher was introducing “verbal karate” which is always a neat approach.  He applies physical technique to verbal and tries to guide us to a place where we never get into a fight; or, at least, tries to keep us farther away. 

Normally I find that a bit too long to listen to, but it was pretty interesting and his pacing was right on.

Second hour was only sparring!  We definitely haven’t done this in a while, but it was brutal fun.  We all got to spar with each person in class – which is a rarity, but a blast.  As usual I took a lot of very solid shots and gave a few (by mistake) as well.  My best shot was an inside crescent on Little Sister.  She has actually gotten so good that she analyzed my technique and started to take advantage of it!  She would get close and just beat the crap out of me.  However, the crescent always throws a false message to the other guy and she walked right into it.  Bang.  Later on I did a spinning back kick and did the spin in with a hook punch right to my kidney.  Beautiful timing, but I think I’m pissing blood today. 

Afterwards I met with Teacher for a beer and discussion.  He complimented my progress and we reviewed everyone’s progress.  The twins will get tested in the next couple of weeks.  

Kids

Something I’ve been avoiding has come to pass. 

I’d like to say that it’s because I don’t have children and that I’m not used to being around them, but I think it’s really that I don’t know how to be an adult.  I instantly try to be a buddy.  This inherently not productive as a martial arts teacher.

Teacher has to go out of town and finally gave me the “call.”  He knows that I’m uncomfortable around the kids, but he wants class to move on consistently and has asked me to help out when he can’t be there.  Unfortunately, his father has late stage cancer combined with other health problems.

So I started coming early to help out with the kids so they can, 1. see who I am, and 2. I can see who they are. 

The last time I had to work with the kids was over 3 years ago and I pretty much liked keeping that distance.  I was so traumatized after the one class I had to “teach” that I would steer any conversation about taking over to anything I could fit in. 

So it was with considerable trepidation that I got to class early to man up and do some teaching. The reason I’m doing this?  I kind of feel that it’s germane to my next rank.  Becoming more comfortable in the teaching/leading role to demonstrate proper assertiveness, etc. 

Anywho, the class went well, and the few interactions I had with the kids went fairly well.  This time I’m very aware that this is how it went until I showed up in class and the kids ran amok.  We shall see. 
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In regular class it was all cat stance all the time.  Since we’d all been around enough he made us sit in the lowest stance we could.  I actually started laughing at one point because he went on with a story to illustrate a point while we stuck our low, static pose.  He threw a queried look at me and I said, “I can’t hold this more than a couple of minutes!”  We all laughed and moved on.

Teaching moment – Realizing I know how to do the move, but have no idea how to translate it into steps, example #6.  After all is said and done, Teacher brings up a critical point to make it all easy and my group looks at me glaringly.  How do you explain that all the work you just did allowed them to understand that last point and correctly do the technique? 

Balance

I was about 50 reps in to a spinning back kick and as time went on I noticed that I kept losing my balance.  Mind you  - I’m the one teaching the class so I was a bit red-faced at this point. 

Thankfully Teacher came in for a simple correction.  “Just look at my face all the way through.”  Bam – just like that I’m perfect again.  As the exercises had progressed I started doing the beginner – looking at the floor, mirrors, whatever it takes to savage balance. 

Teacher is going out of town and wants me to run the class a few days.  This means that I have to run the kids class as well as the adult class.  Talk about anxiety.  Little kids freak me out.  So to maybe help myself out I’m going to a few kids classes before he goes to gear myself up.  Yikes.  It’s like knowing a test is coming up. 

I think in the adult classes we are going to work on jumping kicks.  Something we never do, but they are part of the TSD songbook so I think it’s worthwhile.  I also want to work on them for the simple fact that I can’t remember doing them very well in the past. 

One-step continued

I hurriedly grabbed some time with the internets before class and spotted a move we hadn’t done in ages – the simultaneous block and strike.  I’d actually learned this when I took Wing Chun in High School ages ago and was surprised when it came up in class since TSD seems so static with punch, block, kick, block. 

Anyway, it appeared to be well received and actually kind of challenging for our newer members.  I gather even after a few months of punch then block changing the pattern is very difficult.  Thankfully teaching it made it fairly easy, but Teacher had me constantly slow the pace so everyone could catch up.  Another lesson in teaching.  Do a lot of rote work so people can get comfortable.  I’m teaching to a lot of new folks.  Ugh.  I have a huge desire to skip to the practical demo and I need to slow way down.

The two sisters were tested during the last hour and did pretty good so we have two new Greens.  Tonight one will have to redo her hyung/kata due to a couple of missteps.  I think they’ll be doing some sparring as well since we ran out of time.  Being the Sempai means I’m going to have to take some lumps from their poor power control.  Sigh.

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I’ve restarted my self education and have started relearning Neihanchi Cho Dan.  Anything Teacher learned in the past beyond his 1st Dan has long since been forgotten and he doesn’t appear interested in learning so I’m taking the initiative to learn it.  It doesn’t feel beyond my current level of education, but because of the repetitive hook punches I can easily get confused.  I’m beyond half way and just need to finish up in the next week before I go on vacation.

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Tonight I ask to teach some more advanced kicks like the hook, spinning back and jumping front.  Teacher hasn’t done anything like that in a long time, so I feel like I’m rummaging through the history closet.

X block

In some attempt to provide fresh and interesting grist for the class mill, I dug back in my memory to find something that might grab the classes attention.  After reviewing even more videos on one-step sparring I got a memory jog!  For a very limited time in the very distant past we were taught the X-block.  Basically making a scissors with your arms to stop an overhead strike or front snap kick. 

We haven’t practiced this block in years and it didn’t dawn upon me as to why until I was teaching the evolution.  I went from high blocks and low blocks to x blocks.  Here’s what I found was bad.  You block your line of sight, both hands are occupied and unless you are following up with a technique to take the wrist or heel it doesn’t leave you in a good spot to riposte. 

I’m definitely learning the critical lesson in teaching – deeper understanding of technique by teaching and demonstrating. 

I reviewed the lesson with Teacher and Beard after class, feeling that it went poorly.  Beard said that he really enjoys my lessons just because they are different than Teacher’s – not better or worse.  In my mind I thought I spent the whole time telling everyone what was wrong about the technique and why they shouldn’t do it. 

Applause

I’m already planning for tonight’s lesson after studying some online one-step sparring videos.  I can’t believe the wide variety of style differences purported to be all TSD.  Never the less, I found a lot of ideas and grabbed one I like.

During Tuesday’s class Teacher and I hastily pulled together a lesson for the second hour during the rest break.  I threw out a couple of ideas and we ran through the evolution of exercises that would lead up the final execution.

I’ve always enjoyed how he takes a few basics moves and tied them together.  We tried that with a wrist grab into a lock and submission.  We broke it into small parts and tried to tie that together.  Only this time I was explaining everything and using Teacher as the Uke.  Sweet.

After the lesson everyone applauded. 
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