The Inner Torment Of Teaching Children

A long boring title?  Check.

Another drawn out rant?  Check.

About an issue that is entirely my own?  Check.

I should just write see other posts and probably leave it at that, but I will add a bit more sauce to the post.

I was actually able to teach a bit longer with the eight year olds that my normal five minutes.  I was actually given permission to give them push ups, but to my surprise neither of them knew how to do a push up!? 

After the teeth grinding effort of trying to get them to do one kata, which they should know in their sleep now, I was given a reprieve for a few minutes before I was handed off to even younger kids.  Swallowing my feeling of depression about working with them I hung my head and drug my feet over to them (not really, just how I felt).  To my surprise the youngest kids were the best!  6 years old and serious!  I had a boy and girl that turned out to have an attention span and didn't mind repeating what they were doing until they had it right.  I was so proud!

That was the whole class essentially.  Before we started, Mark and I were trying to remember the kata for our confirmation to get ready to help our two new blackbelts.  Sarah and Kyle passed on their first attempt during the last weekend so that means the next year they will be doing exactly what Mark and I did during our last year.  My brain is so full from new stuff that trying to remember the kata (Kyoku Roku Dan) wasn't coming easily.  Reed came in and ran us through it to help us out.  I was surprised how easily it flowed after we started. 

After class went well.  I'm working on my third bird kata, Haku Tsu ryu no onna, and needed some help polishing what I've learned so far, but Daniel and Reed had me do the first two, Haku Cho and Haku Cho Dai, and found a lot of little things to work on.  The hour zipped by and I had to head home in the dark and heat.

Pre Test For The Browns

It was an up and down night.  

In the beginning of class Sensei handed me my new custom Blackbelt.  wider and stiffer than old beater and now filled with groovy Kanji.  One side has my name and one side has the school name.  I told my wife later that one side said taco bell and the other said sandwich monster.  

Our two Browns are slated to take their testing for their Blacks tomorrow in the afternoon.  All the BBs are invited to go along, but it means that I have to take a vacation day, get a hotel room, and drive quick a bit.  I really want to be there for these guys, but my wife left on vacation and I need to prep to meet her.  It doesn't leave a lot of time to get things done.

An additional factor messing up the drive North is the PNW fires that are still out of control.  Driving to Yakima is going to be horrible.  I wish the best luck.

Class consisted of me working with the two youngest girls on basic blocks and kicks based on a deconstructed kata.  That was the longest 45 minutes of my life.  I don't see it getting better anytime soon.  Keeping my patience together is now the hardest thing for me.  Both of the girls feed off of each other and the giggles make me turn into a grumpy parent for sure.  The other kids rapidly lose patience and look bored and sullen as I try to get the kids to pay attention.

Barring their constant inability to keep to task they actually do fairly well under the gun. Their childish boredom and frustration with rote work gets nicely channeled into violence against me when we get to do pad work.  They are so small that I have to squat in a deep fudodachi for some time.  Man are my legs sore.

More Big Bird

As the Brown belts get closer to their test (on 9-8) I couldn't help be impressed with their knowledge and skill and feel a bit chagrined about my relatively modest learning curve.  I don't have to remember as much as they do, but after working on my new kata and adding a few more steps I realized this is going a very difficult couple of years.  I need to learn 7 more kata and still have to learn all the bunkai that goes with it.

The third bird is called Haku tzu ru no onna.  I'm probably not spelling that very well, but it's a lot of low cat stances and odd bird strikes.  I'm only half way and ran into some transition issues right away which is entirely normal for me.  I kept up, but realized that my learning felt slow and had to stop at one point because I couldn't absorb the info fast enough. 

Part of the issue with learning from some of the other high ranking black belts is that they have a tendency to talk about the esoterica.  So, whereas I need to practice over and over again, they will start talking about some small aspect that needles the crap over some small function.  I don't want to be rude, and it's interesting, but not right at the moment.  Thankfully Reed doesn't do that at all and he can match my learning speed pretty well.  During the after class a new guy showed up to work out with us.  He's working on his fourth degree, but like many in the martial arts life, he has an odd interaction style.  I used to think it was because so many folks that stick with karate have home school backgrounds and consequently don't have great social skills, but I'm starting to think it's a personality quirk. 

For instance there is a tendency to forget social niceties.  Like, I don't recognize you, so maybe we should introduce each other and give each other a frame of reference.  In last night's case I was pulling teeth to get the info from new guy.  And he ends up working with me on my kata for about a half hour.  A lot of this time seemed like it was filled with thinly veiled humble bragging, but he moved beautifully and tried to help me as much as he could.  I'm not know sure why his behavior rubbed me wrong, probably the heat.

Regular class was basic and had some celebration prep.  This usually means I'm getting punched and kicked by the kids.  Reed had me assist and correct as much as I could. It's a recipe for confusion since the kids are watching him and I throw off the sequence to get them do the move correctly. 

Hopefully my embroidered belt will be here on Wednesday or next week!  I'll take a pic and show it off here.

I'm A Big Bird Three

Last night was an alternating Wednesday so we were going to be working on sparring.  With the additional material from Sensei's weekend seminar the content of class has become very interesting.

The class is broken into different groups after warmups to address the various levels of skill.  Last night the two brown belts were pulled to work on their test preparation.  They have a month or so before they go and they look pretty good to me.  I'm not sure how they'll do in the test, but they appear really confident and skilled.

While Mark worked with them I helped Reed with the kids on sparring drills.  The kids never seem to get to sparring because they are working on the new drills.  I'm fine with this because the drills are so awesome that I enjoy learning them with the kids.  Each one builds on the previous and before you know it we are working on a sophisticated drill that cuts through the basics of point based fighting. 

This is of great interest to me.  We never broke up sparring between point based and reality based activity.  I always wondered why I had such a rough time at the tournaments.  Each time I learn something new I just sit there in amazement about how much I missed. 

My favorites are:

• a punch must be followed by a retraction
• a leading jab will almost never be rewarded with a point no matter how awesome

Those would have been nice to have known. 

My "help" consisted of me being the Uke so the kids could see what they were supposed to do.  I got a lot of taps on the jaw and thumps in the belly which always makes them pay attention. 

After than I went over to help the Browns. They were supposed to try to complete a test in forty-five minutes.  Good luck with that one.  Basically, they have to do everything once and fast with no waiting between each component.  It doesn't leave a lot of time to breath or catch your breath.  They seemed pretty good about the whole thing though.

After class was held at Reed's house again.  This means sitting in traffic for twenty minutes and enduring a feeling of endless detours, but the worst party is getting home to my wife who gets grumpier than me if she doesn't eat something by that late.  I'll be happy when they move the after class back to my neck of the woods.

I was practicing my two bird katas so Daniel Sensei was given the task to start me on number three, Haku ichi Ryu no onna.  I'm not sure I'm anywhere near the spelling on that one, but it's much like the others.  The big issue for me is going to be able to keep them separate.  This kata removes all the time breathing and changes the strikes once again.  Instead of eye pokes or punches I'm now doing palms to the heart.  You'd think they could have mixed these together. 

At least when I'm doing them I feel a long lineage of people doing these things since the first days when some guy practicing the kung fu version taught it to the first Okinawan guy.  The kata feels so unlike a Japanese thing and so much like a Chinese thing that I still get a chuckle from time to time.

The Family We Adopt

Earlier in the day I received a text from Reed saying that Morris Sensei had passed away without further detail.  He'd been afflicted with Parkinson's for some time so it appeared the accumulative issues that go with it were finally too much for his system.  Morris Sensei was Reed's principle teacher.  They had met around thirty years ago.

I'd been under the impression that he and Reed were fairly close so I wasn't sure what the impact to the normal flow of things was going to be. At the end of class Reed told a Zen story that was a favorite of Morris.  While he was doing this he became choked up. He was not ashamed of being emotional, which I thought was pretty great.  He was showing the kids that it was okay to be open about it. 

Class warmup was more of the new sparring exercises which focus heavily on movement.  It's a lot of fun to move around in odd shapes and patterns, but it'll take awhile before any of that becomes second nature. 

While the rest of the class focused on sparring and drills I worked with Sarah on her Black Belt test.  I'm usually a bit dubious about providing oversight, but she looked great and all the questions I had turned out to be moot when we reviewed my questions with Reed. 

From what I understand from Reed, folks rarely pass their first test, but from what I saw her doing she seems leaps and bounds better than other folks I witnessed.  Of course everyone is different at their test, so that remains to be seen.

After class was held at Reed's house which turned out be to be a twenty minute drive in traffic.  Thankfully my car had air conditioning.  I worked on my two bird katas with Daniel for about a half hour before my time ran out.

We were able to process a bit more about Morris' passing.  Fifty years of teaching and touching possibly fifty thousand lives.  I kept wondering about his wife of 30 years.  Being left alone at that point in your life seemed horrible to me.  I don't know anything about them, but I hope they had good friends and family.  I don't believe they had children so I hope there are some extended family to help.

Post Seminar Fun Time

I think I might have mentioned before that Sensei has tried to make a consistent schedule which requires each Wednesday to be either self-defense or sparring.  The challenge being that the kids are literally being brought up from the beginning so putting them into the ring is taking awhile.

Last night we took a pleasant left turn.  Reed was able to get into a very elite training with Elisa Au Fonseca this last weekend.  She's the third top sparring champ in the world if I understand correctly and is definitely shooting for the Olympics in a couple of years when they do the demo for Karate.

Reed was able to get an invite and picked up seven pages of sparring exercises.  His normal follow up from that kind of thing is to immediately make everyone practice it so he can remember, but he locked himself down and followed the syllabus.  He did use new warm-ups from the training which was a nice change. 

As per usual, I got the four girls and had to work on Pinan Godan.  I feel like I might have done something bad in a previous life and it's coming back to haunt me.  The first few run-throughs went well, but then it descended into madness.  Once the girls start giggling there is no coming back.  They basically block me out and just do whatever.  I have to keep trying to get them to focus, but I'm apparently easy to ignore, sigh.  I constantly feel the trap.  We are trying to get them to participate in a focused endeavor, but most of them clearly can't concentrate on the work for more than a few minutes. 

Let's just put it this way.  I can celebrate when we finish that section of the class and move on to sparring work.  Unfortunately, we went to a new exercise which wasn't bad, but I would have liked something a bit more hard. 

The exercise

Someone stands behind you and taps various limbs.  You are basically a marionette and every limb that's touch strikes out.  After we mess with that for a few minutes we place an opponent in front of us and try to fight remotely.  It was interesting limiting and frustrating.  Hopefully, we'll working on that a bit more in the future.

Super Death Killer Extreme

I ran down the hall to my wife with a big smile of childish glee, clutching my prize in my hand.  My wife was processing tomatoes for canning and had her hands full literally and figuratively so her response to my glee was a bit subdued.

"Honey!  Guess what I did?!"

"Hmm,  what?" she replied distractedly.

"I kicked a green fly out of the air and killed it!"

I held out my hand to show her my prize.  The fly was slightly pulped and had one broken wing. 

"Uhuh, that's nice," she replied laconically.

"I know right!?" completely ignoring her lack of interest. 

Due to the amount of fresh vegetables in the house we're bound to get some bugs, but the unexpected birth of so many green flies was new to both of us.  As a consequence I ran around with a fly swatter killing as many as I could, but one errant fellow got out ahead of me so I lashed out with a beautifully timed front kick.  The top of my foot stunned the poor fellow and flung him into the air where I followed up with a messy side kick and sent him to the nether world. 

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Class last night had the full spectrum of students.  And by that I mean it was mostly children.  Because there is twelve children, any hope of getting direct education is out the question.  And, as suspected, Mark and I were pressed into service to work on test prep.  I led the warmups while Sarah and Mark got a quick lesson on what they were going to teach.  Sarah is Reeds' wife, and while she is a green belt she is the most organized person I have ever met and can run circles around Mark and me when it comes to dealing with kids. 

After a couple of exercises that went very well, we were given students to work with.  I got Grace and we had to work on her self-defense techniques.  She is a yellow belt and the two techniques are based around escaping from a full nelson.  My gut feeling is that she will never had to experience this in her life because who in the hell would use this? But if they do I hate to think of the pain they'll experience. 

I weigh about 100 more pounds than her, and didn't think much of the escape to be honest.  Grace placed both her hands on her forehead, stuck her butt out, circled her hands downward and then looked up.  My mistake here was to intertwine my fingers tightly.  Both Grace and I heard all my fingers popping and cracking since they couldn't go anywhere and were now being pulling apart by a small amount of leverage.  God! the pain!

After we practiced that enough that I could no longer pick up anything heavier than a feather we moved on to the throw.  This turned out perfect for having someone heavier and taller doing the grabbing.  Instead of breaking my fingers, Grace reached back and grabbed my head,  she then dropped to her knee while pulling my head further.  And I went flying.  After three times I grabbed a few stretching mats to ease my way on the landing. 

I was walking stiffly last night and it'll be worse today as the day goes on.  Just a reminder out there - take your throws often so it's not such a surprise to the system.

Keeping it 100

I could feel my teeth grinding at one point. 

When Sensei's eight year old daughter is "done" with class she only gives the very least in effort.  I can't imagine what she's like at home, but I imagine they feel more free to address her behavior.  Unfortunately, when I have to teach the young folks she is often an issue because I have to devote so much attention to her.  That means the group suffers.  I imagine I should just ignore her, but when she is partnered with another person they both get less done. 

Last night I had four girls of varying ages and experience trying to get through two exercises.   Each having less and less interest in the work as time went on.  On a good night everyone is pretty much on the same page, but as the time stretched on I seemed plagued by several issues.  The daughter and her partner started giggling which is a sure sign things are going down hill.  Then they started shoving each other.  In the other pair, one girl asked a question about every move; plainly thinking none of it made sense. 

We are told to take questions about martial arts seriously and she waits until we are done the move, but at one point I was thinking, "just shut it and do the move."  Years of training helped me keep my internal dialog inside, but I was tired from juggling both teams.

After I got home I realized that day of dealing with personal issues was pushing into class time.  Normally, I seek refuge in the process, but my fuse was short last night. 

That morning my Mom informed me that my Father had cancelled some care that took me a lot of effort to set up.  I didn't think about it in the morning, but I sat down and processed a bit with my wife before I left for class and that was my error.  I was a bit angry with no outlet.  Kata practice was fine, because I didn't have to interact with anyone, but then their seems to be a murphy's rule for this kind of thing. 

"An area of failure will be exploited at the exact time where the impact will be greatest."

Although in my case nothing happened, but my internal exasperation was at a 100. 

A nice side event was that I finally got my order for my embroidered belt started with Sensei.  Trying to find a good translation for my name was a challenge, but he stepped in and saved me the headache.  I'll try to remember to take a picture when I get it.

Depression Stuff

My Buddy Colin Wee who runs Traditional Tae Kwon Do in Perth, Australia is an enterprising guy by anyone's standard.  So I was pleased when he approached me and several other martial arts folks to create some articles so that he could explore areas and how they relate.  I chose depression as a theme because of the issues I've been dealing with parents.  Below is the article I wrote for him and here is his.

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Depression, Symptoms And Its Treatment From the Martial Arts Perspective

Generally speaking, we all have ups and downs throughout the day, week, and season.  Most folks are not usually aware of the moods that pass by if they are fleeting and mild. We tend to become aware of our emotional state when it starts impacting our quality of life.  Because of cultural influence, this article focuses on the Western male.  I can’t speak to other cultures but I can imagine in most patriarchal ones the emotional response is similar.

Although the polar opposite of depression is mania, we’ll focus on depression because it’s generally considered to be the more impactful of the two.  That’s not to say that intense periods of mania aren’t destructive in their own way, but for the most part, it’s not generally considered bad during the initial stages.

In contrast, depression has noticeable symptomology that can be sometimes confused with a physical problem.  Some symptoms can be a lack of energy, an inability to empathize with others, lack of appetite and disrupted sleep patterns.  

Depression traditionally comes from one of three sources; environmental, physical or psychological.  For people living in the North, the environmental effects of being in a situation where there is little to no light for long portions of the year can cause depression.  Physical causes are usually attributed to head injury, but other neurological problems can cause the same symptoms.  The final cause is psychological.  The traditional reason is that there is an issue that is avoided, so it  manifests in some form.  In many cases, this turns out to be depression.

The ability to treat depression can be very difficult. Traditional therapies include medication and therapy.  The therapy is conversation based analysis and can often take a long time for the patient to develop insight into the cause.  If the patient is introduced into the process through doctors visit, the first thing that’s evaluated is the amount of sleep and activity the person has.  If they are seen as a deficit in these areas, the doctors will prescribe medications to allow for sleep at the very least.  Currently, those who have been diagnosed with depression will also be referred to therapy.

Another difficulty using a talking analysis is that a majority of men in Western culture have some degree of difficulty describing their emotions.  It’s not only not having the self-knowledge and vocabulary that slow the process, but culture itself teaches the male (and some females) to suppress outward displays of emotion seen as negative from a very early age.

A common example is the response to ease the pain of a child.  The child is placated and often told to be quiet. There is nothing wrong with that, but the trait strays into a possibly dysfunctional area when the suppression of the child’s emotional responses are continually reinforced.  Examples of this might be, “suck it up” or “boys don’t cry.”  

The counseling experience becomes difficult when the male has to learn to express emotions and emotional states that have been closed off since childhood. The counselor is challenged when the patient can only provide the response, “I’m sad.”  While the client takes the time to learn to emote and explore his emotions, the depressive cycle will continue.  Thus feedback on the counseling experience will be less than satisfactory.

If the patient (in this case the person experiencing medium to significant depression) can physically motivate themselves, activity is used to help moderate symptoms.  The use of exercise is preferred to encourage the person to resume a healthy sleep cycle.  The more the person has a habitual physical routine the better they are going to do during the recovery, which will shorten the process by lessening the symptomology.  

Here is where martial arts excel in the treatment of symptoms.  Running, bicycling, swimming and lifting weights are great for a person, but in each case, when a plateau is reached, the time to spend thinking gets longer and longer. If a person is healthy, then this time is productive in the sense that they have time to sort and process.  If they are not healthy, this time is where cyclical, negative spirals in thought patterns tend to foment.

Martial arts, on the other hand, provide much of the same activity of the other sports, but adds a feature, the requirement to be present mentally.  It’s a rare thing where the practitioner can participate in regular class work and think about much else.  In schools with more conflict based practice, there is little more to focus on than what is occurring at the moment.

The depression sufferer can find a few hours of solace from symptoms and in time can realize a positive feedback cycle in time.  The more practice the better they are going to feel.

In time, depending on the severity of the depression and the ability of the sufferer to address its cause, the lessening of symptoms will continue.  However, it should be known that the path to recovery is always studded with set backs and pitfalls.  The constant to this process should always be regular physical activity.  The course of treatment may be irregular and even when the counselor and client believe they've come to a logical conclusion, further visits may be required to address emerging issues.

The best thing about a good martial arts school is the sense of shared activity and a feeling of a second family. Taking advantage of that environment to shore up one's emotional state is always recommended.  

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Potatoe Fist was a marriage and family counselor for ten years.  He doesn't miss it all.  He went into IT for a good reason.  Thank god for all the beatings he took in his old school to help him through the hard times.

Potty Mouth

As I become more relaxed around the young students I find my behavior becomes more collaborative instead of instructive.  This is not necessarily the best approach and I find after the fact that I should cut down on the funny faces and jokes.  If I could keep it together I think the lesson would go better.  I just seem unable to manage that.  

Last night I was assigned a brown belt to run through his black belt test work.  He'll be tested in September and he's got a lot to get squared away before he's ready for his test. He's self motivated, but having time with the more experienced instructors would be a lot better than me.  I can only judge kata and point out improvements, but the techniques are still a bit mysterious to me.  He's got two months.  Tick Tock.

After about half the class I was give to the ten year old girl, Miya.  Her karate is very solid and she's earnest about her practice.  However, she vexes me with specific questions instead of just doing.  It's good for me because it makes me focus on those specifics and it also allows me to tell what I do and don't know.  

Eventually Louie joined us.  He is also earnest and has fairly good karate relatively speaking.  He's six or seven, but seems to pick up things very quickly and shows good skill so far.  As we progressed through our lesson, and this is where I'm attacking him, I noticed several men in the gym area connected to the studio where looking at us quizzically.  I was shooting a kick and punch at a six year old who is maybe an eighth of my weight who responded with a kiyai and punch to my gut.  

I experienced a moment of embarrassment because it totally looked like a giant trying to beat some kid.  I mumbled to the kids how I looked like a dumbass.  Miya gently reminded me that I shouldn't use profanity around kids.  I was a bit chagrined and apologized and we moved on.  Of course after class I had to make light of my slip with the adults.  

"You're an A - S- S."  Holy cow I'm less mature than the kids in my class.

Two Big Birds

I've been studying Haku Cho for about three weeks now.  Although it's not overly complicated there are fine tuning items to get squared away.  For me it's been the hands and keeping my fingers together.  Last night I got started on the second of these "bird" katas.  This is Haku Cho Dai. 

The somewhat humorous story Reed tells me is that the first kata looks as though the learner went to class and only learned the first part.  The second resembles the first, but it turns around and returns to the staring point like every other kata. 

It's not actually true because the katas are different enough that there would be no mistaking either, but the pattern is definitely the same.  I think that can be said about most katas though.  Anyway, this one is long in physical space.  I'm lucky enough to have a long living room and my wife begrudgingly allows me a chunk of it for kata, but the Dai takes up all the space available. 

We didn't have too many adults in class on Monday night, but instead of working with the kids I was put in the corner to work on Haku Cho.  I was then introduced to Dai and fumbled through the first half.  After I started getting some comfort I got a few of the girls to work on Pinan Godan.  For the most part it went well, but in time the complaint of "my legs hurt" and other classics started.  Mind you this was after a speech from Reed talking about exactly this kind of thing.  Sigh.  I guess it's a constant battle. 

After class was just me and the Sensei's Reed and Daniel.  The heat was pretty intense, but we opened the garage door for the small amount of breeze.  We completed the whole kata and went over the details as much as possible in the time I had. 

I let them know how much I appreciated their time, but they just shrugged it off.  I can only assume that teaching gives them a lot of pleasure, but after I left they went about working on their own things.  How many hours must they put into this? 

Sweep The Legs!

After the last bunch of visitors had passed through the house and the obligations had been met, I can go to Karate with a minimum of guilt.  Of course while we were gone on a weekend trip my wife was busy prepping plans for ripping out another rooms walls.  So my fun time has dried up fairly quickly.

Thankfully she doesn't pressure me too much on Mondays and Wednesdays.  I think she understands I need to get my exercise and attitude adjustment as much as I can.

Last night was fight night.  Which means that Sensei Reed is getting the kids closer to sparring on a regular basis.  However, the class is relatively light on adults at the moment so he ended up managing the three ring circus while I helped our only brown belt work on her test.  We got through most of the bunkai (30!) which ends up with a few sweeps.  As an Uke (the attacker and loser) I mostly throw a punch and get beat up.  The sweeps aren't usually a big deal but I took my falls on hardwood.  This morning I'm definitely feeling it on my one hip. 

Reed then set up three rings and each of us had to judge.  I have to admit it's the cutest fighting I've ever seen, but I feel crappy having one kid lose and take it personally.  We got through three or four three point matches before the end of class.  The kids were all pretty stoked afterwards so I would count that as a win.

After class we worked on my Pinan Godan.  Then we worked on the five bunkai (it's like two-step sparring).  Senseis Daniel and Reed would rotate with me to iron out the techniques so that we can teach them in the future.  The fifth is my favorite because it contains a double foot sweep.  The front one and then drop into a spinning sweep for the rear leg.  I doubt I could do it very quickly in real life, but it would be awesome to see used by someone quick.

Curriculum

During my black belt confirmation trip to Yakima, Reed Sensei and the others went to great length to talk about the upcoming year.  This was to develop the curriculum to match the other schools in the region and pitch ideas back and forth.  Through a lot of stories I've heard all kinds of the passive-aggressive behavior that the schools have had with one another, but for the most part they want to be on the same page.  However, having a head master who might not be absolutely consistent from time to time creates friction.

An example in Kata.  He tells one school hands are this way and another school that way.  When testing happens one school fails all the tests because their hands are wrong. How is the local instructor supposed to deal with this?  He teaches his students the other version and then they go back.  As you can guess this might create some feelings. 

To contend with this students are taught to expect flaky judgement at tests.  Not fair, but that's the way life is I guess.  Thankfully color belt tests are all done locally so that's all consistent with the local curriculum. 

So after long conversations with the new regional head guy everybody is on the same page about what katas are supposed to be learned.  Another area of contention, but everyone is on the same page.  We'll see how this ends up in a year.  The black belts all had to rapidly learn a relatively simple kata, pinan godan, and get ready to teach it to everyone in bites. 

This process started last night.  Thankfully, this first portion of the kata is fairly simple and the kids were able to absorb it.  We worked on that for half the class, but as the only other black belt I was instructing the kids again.  The little bit of delight in that was that one of the little girls didn't want to touch the boy across from her.  For their age group and skill level we will often have them touch hands so they know how far they need to be for the work.  These two would get farther and farther apart.  Hah! 

The second half of class was spent working on kata with a brown and green belt.  We didn't get to clean too much up, but the practice was nice. 

I ended up missing the second hour due to work.  Sigh.  I'm definitely not advancing at this point.  This summer is going to be a challenge to remain consistent.

Two Senseis And The Cramps

"That's the name of my band.  You've probably never heard of them."
The tongue and cheek comment of many young musicians who like to quote that line in the Rose city seemed appropriate today.  The ridiculous, but fun situations I end up being in made the perfect band title.

Our regular class was a play day because of Celebration on Monday.  In the beginning of class Sensei said, "you can play or you can train."  His wife and I ended up training on the same kata for the whole hour.  It was fairly well needed in my case, just because I hadn't seen regular training in a few weeks.  His wife hadn't even been taught the kata.  So it worked out for the both of us.

I will say this, the children realllyyyy enjoyed their time.  I've never seen 45 minutes been so animated, and loud.

After class was brutally hot in the garage, but I got Daniel and Reed as teachers.  I needed to complete my learning of Pinan Godan.  I'd had the first half down, but needed the last couple of moves.  A simple kata with complex moves.  I suppose they are all that way, but we are supposed to be starting to teach the color belts for the next year so I needed to know what I was doing. 

This year they are going to see if breaking the kata down into digestible sections will work better.  Each section will be taught with it's bunkai in an effort to get the understanding of what's going on increased.  I have to admit I liked doing it that way quite a bit.  The more esoteric movements suddenly have a foundation.

I got  home pleasantly tired, but as I was failing asleep I got a tremendous cramp in the my left foot.  As I brought my foot up to try to massage it my in thigh muscle (maybe the groin?) cramped as well.  The pain had me fall out of bed and try to sort out what position would create relief.  My wife mumbled in her sleep, "straighten your leg."  Which is normally good advice, but as I got to my feet I couldn't stand on the effected foot.  I worried that I had pulled a muscle and walked/drug my foot on my way to the bathroom.

Within a few minutes the muscles unknotted themselves and I was able to lie back down and go to sleep.  Thankfully when I woke this morning I was totally fine!  I'm breathing a sigh of relief.  That leg/thigh cramp was the first of it's kind for me and I was concerned it did some serious. 

Teacher To The Stars

I'm trying to be better at recalling the schedule Sensei has set for class, but because we are getting ready for Celebration (quarterly testing in other words) the content of class has been devoted to getting the under-belts ready. 

Sensei thought he was going to be late and wanted me to start the class, but he showed a little bit early.  I'd spent a couple of minutes practicing the bow-in and didn't realize my part was just Hajime mas.  "Begin we will,"  in English.

Before class Mark gave me a "thank you for training with me" gift!  He's a fine artist so I was fairly pleased but felt dorky since I don't have anything for him.  My wife was happy because that's going to go up on a wall somewhere. 

Since we had time we ended up practicing bo kata and then Pinan Godan or as much as we could recall.

Class started and I knew where it was going to go before we even bowed in.  Time to teach the girls. Sigh.  However, I was only given Niva and without her cousin it was like a breath of fresh air.  She paid attention and didn't get distracted!  I felt like a real teacher!

After about twenty minutes I was working on some self-defense with a group of four kids.  That went fairly well, but spacing and timing went poorly.  Again, it was pretty good considering the newness of the students.

A whole class of teaching!  Who would have thought.

Relativity

A big part of my life is wrapped up around people visiting during the summer months.  Our home in the Rose city is pretty big so having visitors has become a fairly regular.  This summer we have exactly no weekends free.  Our current visitors are my cousin and her family from PA and that's been pretty great.  I don't have a sister and she's pretty much the closest thing I've got in that case and I also get along pretty well with her husband.

While they get out and tour around I try to see what my schedule looks like and what I can fit in.  Thankfully I was able to go to the first hour of karate last night.  I thought we were going to be doing a false celebration to get the students ready, and I was partially correct.  I was given to the brown belts and told to run through their test.  We had forty-five minutes and I didn't think that was going to work.  The Black-belt exam is pretty extensive and usually takes an hour at the very least. 

However, I was given some unique instruction. Don't chit chat, and keep the flow.  Don't stop to critique.  With that we flew through a lot of the material, but they suffered in a few spots.  Their kata was fine, but remembering the sheer volume of bunkai bogged them down in a few spots.  When they didn't know something I had to move them to the next component.  I'd say they knew ninety percent of the material, but I got them through the whole test in forty-five minutes. 

My wife asked later if they would have passed.  "Oh hell no," I replied.  They've got four months or so to be ready.

Class ranks have swelled and remained fairly consistent.  We've usually got ten children regularly and now have a returning black-belt, Anthony, so the class can be up to 18 members at times. 

Maybe Wednesday I'll get a little more time to work out since the family will be out on tour.  I think my wife already has plans for labor tonight.

Random Stuff

I'm not sure I forgot to post in the last week or so, but the slew of summer visitors has now arrived and my attendance is a bit spotty as a result.  

Tonight was still warm, but Mark and I were there early and worked on the staff kata for a bit.  Thankfully Kyle showed up and helped with a lot of the basic work, but I was already sweating by the time we bowed in.  

We had a long and interesting warmup.  By that I mean that we were introduced to push ups and crunches.  We don't normally do this stuff, so it was a nice change of pace, but he wanted the young students to know about it for the future. 

I ended up working with four kids on downward blocks for quite some time.  Normally I hate that kind of thing, but all four are very dedicated and serious so the time flew by.  

We finished up doing a little back and forth with Nifanshi Oyo.  My two kids knew it pretty well and took instruction very well.

Off topic - I have a sunburn.  My skin feels very tight and it's of course very sensitive.  Ironically going to Karate made me feel better in the sense that sweating and moving seemed to loosen things up.

On an another totally unrelated issue.  My Mom's dementia seems to be kept in check for the last couple of weeks, but she told me that when she missed my phone call in the morning she couldn't remember how to hit redial or call me and just sat and cried waiting for me to call back.  That just guts me.  Thankfully Karate was there and I didn't have to think about that for an hour.  Sigh.

Burning All The Way

We lost every bit of Spring this year.  We went from the fifties to the eighties over night and it doesn't look we have any relief in site.  So this means Karate class is going to be insufferable due to the heat. 

Thankfully the club where we hold the class is air conditioned, but it appeared to be labored and just the barest activity brought the sweat out.  I probably wear the lightest of all our gis, but I was dribbling just trying to help a few of the tiny girls work on a kata.  There seems to be a regular ten children coming which is nice for the class, but it means that the old folks don't get to do much in terms of learning new stuff, but we are getting a lot in terms of teaching kids.

As I've grumped before that the kids can be challenging to me.  The two girls I got are cousins and love to laugh and giggle.  They are sweet and relatively nice, but they have a hard time digging into the details.  I'm afraid I'm not much of a teacher for that age group, but I know the kata they are learning so it's off to the races.  After a half hour I was much relieved to be given to Ivanna Sensei.

Ivanna is still in high school and is very quiet, but she's a second degree black belt and knows the material I'll be learning very well.  We reviewed Haku Cho and cleaned up some hand locations and chatted about the bunkai.  I hadn't realized that I needed to learn ten kata for my second degree.  I was under the impression it was five.  Whatever, I learn and move on.

Second hour (afterclass) was off because Daniel Sensei is moving, but Reed offered to go to the park if we wanted to train.  I wanted to train, but it was 92 degrees out.  No thanks. 

I surprised my wife by showing up early so we were able to have a date night on a Monday!

Laughing All The Way

I got in from the East Coast late on Monday.  For those of you that haven't read the past few posts, I had to travel out visit my parents.  Unfortunately my Mother has worsening symptoms around dementia.  It's absolutely the worse and my Father isn't in the best health to help manage around the house.  It's a soul-sucking situation. 

I'm normally very easy to laugh, but with the combo of jet lag and the situation I haven't found anything very light.  Every time I do laugh I feel guilty and so on.

I haven't sleep well for five days, but I know if I didn't get at least some exercise it would be even worse.  I opted going to the first hour knowing it was going to be sparring, but that suited me. 

The only problem is that the kids are so inexperienced that Reed Sensei is trying to get everyone to learn basic etiquette around the ring and how to handle themselves.  He's pretty clever so instead of working on tactics too much he opted to make it a game. 

We got pool noodle swords and had regular matches instead of punching and kicking we were waving around the swords.  I actually caught myself laughing for a really long time, but upon leaving class I was returned to reality.  Yuck.

On a side note we are starting to build a website for the class.  If we get one regular student out of it we will have paid for in one month!

I still have to order my belt with name and school.  Getting a translation out of someone who can actually read and write in Japanese is a bit of challenge.  I'm concerned that I'll get something silly by accident.

And So It Begins

Despite still being a bit wiped out from the weekend I was anxious to get to class to see what was next!  MaryAnn had planted a bug in my ear about the day after you get your sho dan (first degree).  You get to do something else! 

It hadn't dawned upon me that I was actually going to get to practice something else for once.  I've been working on Kyoku Roku Dan and Nifanshi Sho Dan for so a whole year so getting to look at something else was absolutely novel.

Regular class is taking on a new vigor.  A majority of the students are young folks from the ages of 6 to 13.  I think we have eight children most of the time now with new ones appearing all the time.  Last night we got a new kid and I was assigned to him after warmups to work on the basics.  Normally, I don't care for this kind of thing because kids have even less attention span than I do, but he did great.  Probably a half hour of straight work and he got better and better as time went on.  I was very impressed.

My guess is that this is going to be the nature of things for some time.  Work on getting the kids up to their next belt and then work on our own stuff in the background.  It doesn't feel fair since we pay the same amount, but the focus of the school to maintain the current students is very important if we want to ever expand again. 

To that end I hope to start working on a rudimentary website for the class/school.  Reed Sensei's wife is open to the idea and working on a possible e-commerce idea so folks can pay through the site!  Talk about forward thinking.  I was just hoping to have something folks could find if they were searching online.

After class was pretty exciting in that I got to learn a new kata.  Haku Cho is the first of the bird style forms I have to learn for my second degree blackbelt.  The next part of my life is two years of White Crane kata in order to get there.  I'm a big bird!

Hopefully I'll be able to squeeze in a Kama (little scythes) as well.