Half A Bubble Off

It was late in the evening and sudden impact of our foreheads connecting was alarming since it was accompanied by that ripe watermelon noise.  Both Reed Sensei and myself stumbled back for a second as my eyes attempted to focus for a bit.  Thankfully neither of us was hurt and that led to some laughter.  

However, that wasn't going to be the end of it and it certainly wasn't the beginning either.
Since it was a Monday we did a Test run through starting in the Black Belt Club (aka Reed's garage).  I felt pretty good going in, but my recent lack of practice started to show.  By the fifth kata the accumulation of mistakes make me stop and start over at one point - a definite low point.  

I will say that part of the distraction is that I'm trying to keep my eyes up.  I practice with my eyes down and that's a no-no for testing.  Through the course of the night I got better, but the first katas were pretty terrible.  

In between each kata is the bunkai.  These are designed to show that we can extract a move from the kata and make a practical defense out it.  The ones that were original to our teachers are often short and a bit boring.  So we've been developing them into some lengthier more elaborate exchanges. Last night we made a rather action packed one that started with me being the aggressor.  I try to do a forward collar grab and Olivia reaches in and grabs mine and pulls me down toward her.  I'm met with a knee to the chest.  This brings me into position for her to swing a leg over and catch the opposite shoulder and drive it down while yanking my other arm up.  The result is that I spin in the air, land on my back and she punches me in the face. After we did this a few times I notices my elbows getting a bit sensitive, but didn't think much about it.  Apparently my new gi is way rougher than I'm used to and removed the skin around my elbows in a couple of places,  ow!

After all the action I'm completely sore this morning.  My back is in knots, my thighs are super sore from knee strikes, but I'm motivated to practice and have already made it half-way through the test by 8am.

Research And Development With Fists

Intermittent poster here. 

I keep forgetting to jot down notes from class and/or training.  Each class has a tendency to blend with another and improvements are small and overall progress is measured by increments.

For instance I know all the patterns all the way through now, and I don't usually have too many errors anymore, but the focus is on timing now.  So we methodically go through each kata and work on fast, slow, rest, speed, etc.  Thankfully I'm getting slightly better while Olivia appears to be squared away already.  Thankfully she's patient with me and can offer constructive criticism and great support.

Due to the schedule, last night was fight night, but Reed was feeling creative so the Black belt club worked back and forth on developing bunkai from some of our kata.  

I was asked to see if I could figure something out of Hakutsuru No Ottoko.  This turned out to be very difficult to do.  The standard bunkai really uses the best that the kata offers, but it's short.  We worked on expanding it which seems fun and more action packed, but I wasn't sure if I needed to have Olivia buy off on it.  

It did serve to get me to understand that our creativity can be put into use when everything seems to be pretty rigidly set out in our style of Karate.  I think the regional group of leadership has started focusing on the fact that we need get outside the box when we are at this level of practice.  It just takes time to rework my brain.

At class we had three point sparring and took it me long time to warm up to.  I only won two matches and it didn't feel great.  I only remembered to use my legs late into the matches and that turned the tide for me.  I don't believe my legs are much longer than anyone else, but their perception is that they are hyper long.  Whatever.  It got me the points.  

Point sparring agitates me.  Knowing exactly what to look for and to do the things are that easy to be witnessed turn the tide in scoring.  So a good block on a kick or punch are disregarded for a few reasons.  I get it and I'm learning, but I don't have to like it.  It's just that my natural competitiveness makes a loss frustrating.  

Timing And Technique

With our Ni Dan test coming up in three months attention to detail is the primary focus.  

I try to be objective about my personality, but the truth is the fact that I'm having some problems motivating myself to do the practice I need to do.  This would be absolutely going over problem spots in katas until they no longer crop up.  However, work at the house and life issues make practice hard to do most days.  I mean, I'm just making excuses at this point, but this leads up to how I do in class.

Last night we met in Sensei's garage and even though the heater was on we could see our breath.  Due to possible snow barely anyone made it to class.  So Sensei, Maia and I just worked on refinement.  In last night's case I worked on Wando for both hours and although I'm concerned that I have a lot of issues we were able to get me to look pretty darn good by the end of the evening.  Timing seemed to be a big issue for me. My sense is that I'm doing a one-two and I'm usually just doing one, one , one.  I'll need to continue to work on that.  

The side notes 
My Mother is nearing the end of life, but seems to be able to make miraculous recoveries each time she goes to the hospital. She has a medical directive in place that indicates that she wants to end life, but my Father is having a problem with this so things get complicated.  So my brother and I wait by the phone.

We are working on yet another part of the house.  This time it's our bedroom.  Since we are pretty good at it now it's gone a lot easier, but it's still a month in.  This time we've elected to put in built in closets and under window seating.  It just means more time till completion.  So we're living in a guest room in mean time.  

We have chickens and we're still learning lessons about them.  We had, through a variety of circumstances, two bantams until the rooster died two days ago.  This means that the hen is by herself because we can't allow her to mix with the regular hens.  So my wife has decided to make her a house chicken.  And my wife is now leaving for a week to take care of a sick friend.  Sigh.  

Hole In Foot

My wife and I are redoing yet another part of the house.  This time it's our bedroom and it should be the last of the massive internal projects.  We opted to pull an old wall out to expand the space and so far so good.  The detail work coming up as we put things together will take a long time, but the major operations have completed nicely. 

This kind of work at the house causes some difficulty though because I work my regular day and then work at night.  My only escape is to go to Karate which is nice, but I'm wiped out pretty quickly by midweek.  It's not so much the exertion, but the constant activity.  It also leaves me in a situation where I don't have enough time to think or process so karate can become a bit more difficult. 

Olivia (my NiDan partner) and me are at the point where we are fine tuning as much as possible so when are being critiqued the amount of notes can get pretty sizable.  The normal process is to be given three items to correct per session because it was the easiest to absorb.  However, now we are given about 6 to 12 depending on how much needs to be addressed.  That being said it's nice to say that I can address a lot of the things given to me, but some things remain elusive.  It kind of depends on the location of the correction in the kata.

During my Saturday practice with Daniel and Olivia I managed to open up the top of my foot.  Due to my frozen toe, I'm unable to go to my right knee and be on the ball of my right foot.  So I go to the top of my foot.  It doesn't slow me too much, but on Saturday, I kept catching the top of my foot on a high spot on the floor.  By the end of the training I had a nice bloody hole.  Here I am on Tuesday still with Band-Aids, hoping that it heals up before tomorrow.  Hah!

Back In The Saddle

It seems like a propitious start to the year to have the class almost immediately after New Years day.  We didn't do anything ceremonial, but it appeared that vacations and very cold weather kept everyone home for our advanced classes.

Black belt club was just me with Sensei's Reed and Daniel.  As per the Monday schedule we did as much of test run through as we could.  Reed's garage is heated by a moderately sized space heater, but when I got there I started warming up with a jacket and hat on.  Once we got going it wasn't bad, but I kept my socks on the whole time.

Before I went to class I was splitting wood and chose not to use my back brace.  This turned out to be a poor choice in the long run.  Splitting is great work, but bending over and over again to pick up the split stuff appears to be the worst thing I can do to my lower back.  To add insult to injury, the Sensei's have really begun to focus on my stance in such away that I'm no long leaning forward.  Boy, is that tough.  Before bed I opted for ibuprofen and realized I should have taken it earlier as a prophylactic.  Just turning in bed was tough.

We were able to get about five kata with their bunkai before time ran out, but the amount of notes were pretty significant.  Nothing horrible, but basic things that have slid out of focus.  Hips, hands, and depth.  I'm so used to Daniel being on an A+ level with his kata that I was caught off guard when Reed give him a few notes here and there.

Regular class consisted of only Sarah, me and the two Sensei's.  When the class is this small Reed reserves the time for R & D.  The semester's kata is SonShein (sp?) which feels very elementary, but I gather it can be used for Blackbelt level tests as a rest kata.  A rest kata, as I'm finding out, is a purposefully short one set in the middle to give yourself some breathing room.

Anyway, the process of R & D is to create Bunkai and test every approach to a move to see how it works. During one of our ideas we moved into a triangle choke (grabbing under one arm and around the neck at the same time).  Unfortunately, I've been dealing with a slight neck issue and totally didn't think of it, but Sarah gave me a shock when she bared down a bit and my neck gave me a red alert.  Strangely on the ride home I noticed that I could turn left way better than I had been in able to for months.  I hope that holds.

Post Vacation Review

My wife and I got invited to our friends house in Mexico and it was the perfect antidote to the cold temperatures and endless darkness of the Thorn city. Even now I'm looking at my cold fingers while I'm typing and wishing I was back down there looking out across the bay in my shorts. 

At the very least I was able to get back in time to get to class last night.  We are going into a tiny bit of shutdown for Xmas and New year so I was anxious to get to class and get some directed practice in.  

At the Black Belt class we jumped right into a test practice.  Since I'd been practicing and fairly well, I thought, I gave off the energy of confidence.  However, the first two kata got somewhat messed up, we missed a kata somehow and then I didn't depend on myself and ended up forgetting where I was in a kata.  Not a great show.  However Reed said that we were ahead of schedule and looking reasonably well.  

We were also told that the blackbelts prepping for testing would be heading up to Eugene for a day in the new year to meet with Albert Sensei for test critique.  I gather this is a special deal since this hasn't been done before.  He's been practicing for 50 years and has an attention to detail that is phenomenal.  Last time we met, a few years ago, he was suffering from some physical issues, but gave as much as he could and had a very good attitude.  

In regular class we completed the test practice because we didn't get the last kata in during the black belt club.  After that, we each got 5 minutes to chose whatever we wanted to work on.  I ended up picking European blocking because I'm mystified by it.  It's not necessarily complicated, but I can't seem to get ahold of it.  Some showed up with as a demonstration at one of the Shudokan schools and the Shihan there said, "oh man, that's cool.  We should add this to the blackbelt test."  Since I didn't do the formal brown to black here I missed out on this bit.  I can't find a video on the youtubes, but it's a east/west north/south drill in four parts.  The four parts are broken into attack and defense and then move to the next position.  Done fast it's very cool and show all the basics in one package.  

My NiDan partner, Olivia, chose to work on our stances  - in this case neko, the cat stance.  To help us out Reed Sensei place a staff in our belts along our back to ensure a proper upright stance.  Very eye opening as I tend to lean forward to look low.  My back was pretty sore by the time we finished that.  So much to learn!

Have a happy holidays!

Daygrinder and Bluetoe

It sounds like the title to a new buddy action comedy set in a dystopic waste land in the future, but in reality it's just two facets of my life from the last week.  

The Bluetoe refers to the color of my toenails last night while we did a run through of the test in Sensei's garage.  Alas, his wife had forgotten to turn the space heater on earlier.  Although we couldn't see our breath, the room felt like it was in the mid 50s (f) the whole time we were there.  We were extra vigorous just to keep warm.  No dilly-dally for us.  I believe we finished in about 45 minutes.  Record time.

About two weeks ago I bit down extra hard and knocked a chunk of tooth off a molar.  The pain was exquisite.  After the dentist had removed the shard and repaired the spot she said that I needed to get a night guard as I showed signs of grinding my teeth.  After making an appointment I realized that I forgotten to mention that I wear retainers and my teeth can't actually touch one another at night.  I was then told that I'm a daygrinder.  Now I'm painfully aware that I do it all the time.  Trying to stop it is a poorly drawn battle line.

Last night after the test run through we did something I can't recall doing in ages - kicking drills!  We ran through front, shove, side, step through and wheel kicks.  I thought I was going to be crippled this morning, plus all the lumps I took from my co-kickers, but I'm delighted to tell you only my pinky toe seems to be giving me any trouble.  I'm going to keep moving around today as much as possible in fear of stiffening up.

The highlight to all that was I was experiencing a lot of anxiety because I wanted to protect my already messed up toes and was concerned that I was unable do the kicks anymore.  To my delight I was still able to do a roundhouse to Kyle's six foot head.  Lucky me.  

We did a lot of self-defense kinds of things and that's when I noticed those of us who were at the garage session had blue toenails.  It was like the march of the living dead karateka.

New Guy Dave

Our text feed was filled with people saying they couldn't make one or both of the classes last night.  Although that's a bummer generally speaking, it means that the class was going to be small or a private lesson.  I used to be frustrated by that, but now I'm definitely down with the attention to detail it provides and the longer periods of time we can spend on single parts of exercises.  

The black belt extra class, which meets at Sensei's house between the general class and the adult class requires a drive to the South which can take anywhere between fifteen to 40 minutes depending on traffic.  For whatever reason I got all green lights and ended up second.  Very unusual for me.  The class ended up being Mya, Mark, Sensei and me.  Perfect class.

We went through as much of the test as we could in forty-five minutes.  By the end we had made it through seven kata and their bunkai.  Not bad, but the slow up was due to Sensei's attention to detail on the bunkai.  It mean lots of restarts and conversation.

I finally got to meet our latest addition to the adult class, Dave.  A silver-haired guy that reminds me of the consummate ex-Californian.  You can practically visualize this guy surfing.  I found out later that he was a student of John Sells who our Sensei studied under from time to time.  Dave lives almost an hour away so he appears to be very invested in the class time.

Because Dave has been out of practice, Reed is taking some extra time to go over the basics.  In my experience this can be trying because the basics are something we do with the kids and can be boring even if you are focusing on your stances and getting things correct.  However, since Dave has been around since back in the day, the basics took on several layers of complexity.  Simple drills became very complex as step and step were added.

We finished the class with a little kata.  I was able to teach Haku Cho to Sarah for a bit which was nice, but we ended up having a discussion about teaching method.  I've definitely got a learning curve there.

Finally! I Get To Teach An Adult

It's not that we aren't helping each other all the time, but acting in the role as a teacher specifically to pass recent knowledge is pretty exciting.  

The two folks that made it through their year of confirmation have both decided as of last night to follow the track to Ni Dan using the Birds package.  

Blocks of Kata and their associated Bunkai/Oyo are called packages in Shudokan parlance.  In my case I'm doing the "bird" package.  At least five of the kata are straight up white crane kata derived from an ancestor of ours that when to China to learn martial arts.  So we have the version that has been filtered through Japanese culture, but it's pretty recognizable by anyone for what it is.  The remaining kata were selected over the years as the default for one reason or the other.

Starting with me (or my skill level in this year) we were given the option to select a different package which contained five Shotokan kata and five Riuryu kata.  I stuck with tradition and the fact that I sort of knew two of the kata (Wando and Rohai) to help me make my choice.

When the two new sho dans (Sarah and Kyle) had the "talk" with Sensei they both went with the traditional, aka "the birds". To me the talk was kind of a big deal.  I was aware that I was making a choice about what I was going to be doing religiously for the next two years and these both gave off the air of nonchalance when they did it.  So much for tense considerations.  I was worried that everyone would blow off the birds because they seem so weird, but so far there are four of us following that path.  Since Olivia and I are a year and half in we get to be close in teachers.  

During class we were able to start the process of teaching Kyle and Sarah.  However, with the both of us saying different things it turned into a hash pretty quickly.  Way too much information for them to absorb.  We found that when we taught them one on one we did way better.  Learning to teach all over again.  

A side note - now that we are getting the bunkai down, Reed and Daniel are adding to the few moves to make them more complex.  Yikes, more to remember when everything seems so tenuous.

A Rat!

Sensei sent out a message on the text chain letting us know that someone had contacted the local code enforcement officer about running a business out of his garage.  Namely our class!  Consequently he didn't want us there to practice between classes until he sorted it out. 

A side effect of this issue is that it has lit a fire under Sensei about finding a place.  However, a brief conversation about rent prices really shocked me.  Just finding a space in an out of the way strip mall costs around $6000 freedom dollars!  How does anyone stay in business?!

We all realize that if we had our own place it would be so much easier to train.  Some of the students train three classes in a row twice a week because that's all that's available.  That's really pushing it for some of the kids in school.  By the time we get out of the last class (8:30) I'm ready to hit the sack and they still have hours of homework.  It doesn't make for a conducive learning environment. 

By yesterday afternoon Sensei finished up with the city and straightened out the code.  Since it's just us coming to work out and no money is being passed around they were cool.  But the question remains, who dropped a dime on Sensei?  We better getting Scooby Doo.

Last night was a lot of detail work on a few of my katas and during the class it was a lot of basics exercise.  My feet and legs are killing me today.  Brutal and made it easy to sleep.

Forgotten Notes

Hey Everybody!

Oh man, it's been a long time since I've posted.  Where did the time go and all that?  I keep forgetting to write in the blog the day after.  Too much going in life, but I am still remaining as consistent as I can be with class and practice.

As I mentioned in previous posts I'm on the log slog towards my Ni Dan (2nd degree) test in early May.  If I didn't describe it in the past each exam in the Shudonkan school is from a different style.  This is a reflection of the schools roots, when it was simply a place for anyone to practice.  So many people from many styles would come and hang out, but instead of cross pollinizing the school chose to learn the style of the other folks as best they could.

So the first test, Sho Dan, is a smattering of some in house (proprietary) kata and technique and some ground level stuff from other Okinawan school.  The second degree is mostly bird kata.  And when I say bird kata I mean it.  It's 90% white crane from Wushu that's been modified for Japanese sensibility and finally practiced by my tall, gringo ass.

The third is all Gjo Ryu and in the fourth the practitioner is encouraged to find a style and learn it.  Fun stuff.

In my case, and the rest of the tests as well, you are required to perform ten kata in that style and execute 10 bunkai that take a piece of the kata and transform it into a technique.  There are set bunkai (a two man pre-staged) given to us by the teachers, but as of late Reed has been encouraging us to invent our own.  Considering the massive effort we've been putting into the kata developing bunkai feel likes it's insurmountable.  Neither Olivia or myself are given to being creative in that area and just learning the basics has been challenging enough.  We've still got six months so there is still room to amplify if we can.

In an attempt to do better, I've started taking private lessons with Daniel sensei so I can amplify my regular practice.  I just started that last Saturday and it was eye-opening about how much I can work on.  My new normal is taking notes and trying to undo bad practice or add in things I've missed.

So, for the few of you that do read this I apologize about the absence.  I'll try to keep up!

Ten In Thirty

I apologize for not writing frequently, but that's mostly because I update the blog while I'm at work.  The issue is the new job doesn't have a lot of slack time for to think deeply about my Karate practice.

I recently started moving my practice around so it resembles the test as closely as I can make it.  This means I do all ten kata in a row.  Because I'm not stopping to do the Bunkai between each form I can basically do the whole thing in around a half hour. 

As a result I've found my weak spots in my kata which is great, but absolutely infuriating. I had definitely thought I had everything nailed down way better than I do.  I also learned that I need to practice this everyday because little practiced katas have a tendency to fall apart when not touched upon at least every three days.

I think I've mentioned that I had a few weeks of 10 to 11 hour work days and as a result I have crippling pain in my left hip and right ankle.  I literally sat so long I compressed and shrunk tissue in my hip.  I also tend to cross my ankles for long periods of the time. The result ended up doing the same in my ankle.  So it was back to the PT to sort out all that stuff.  Walking is painful and running doesn't work at all. This means much of karate can be fairly painful. 

I'm back to taking Ibuprofen once a day and icing several times a day.  Warming up and stretching have become pretty important and I should have more conscious of it in the past.

Notes from class:

- Kyle and Sarah are off to Yakima to do their confirmation exam this exam.  I sure wanted to be there.
- Our youngest member of the adult class, Maia, is a new Brown belt.  She's learning and retaining at a phenomenal rate.  I'm super jealous of that.
- Reed, Daniel, and Olivia are off to tournament on the 12th.  There are doing a three person demo based on the kata Wando.  I'm experiencing a bout of jealousy.  I'd love to do something like that, but time is the villain.

So Much Wando

It's been a couple of weeks!  Work turned into a bit of a nightmare.  I've been working 10 to 12 hours days for about 10 days straight now.  The exhaustion didn't leave me much time to do anything, but eat dinner and go to sleep and then do it all over again.

The emergency is slowly resolving give me some more time to myself.  And maybe I'm getting used to the long days, but in any case I was able to go to class for the first time in awhile.  Let's just say that my performance was less than adequate in my own mind.  But the occasional practice I've been doing kept me from looking like a total failure.  Olivia and I ripped through out list of test katas in 45 minutes.  I didn't look good on two of the bigger ones, but the speed made me feel good.

In the main class we focused on a single kata, Wando, and I was able to refine that pretty darn well.  Lots of things I'd missed in the pass.  I took about 15 minutes to work with one of our new Brown belts, Mia.  I'm not impressed with my ability to be objective with another persons kata, but I did find a few things to target that caught my eye so maybe I'm not that horrible afterall.

After class finished Reed, Daniel and Olivia practiced their big demo for the next tournament.  An incredible fight scene for the entertainment portion of the day.  They used Wando as the base and created a fight scene based on all the moves.  Lots of fun and bodies flying.

A Twist In The Test

As I've reported before, I'm on the long slog to the test so there isn't much to add on a weekly basis.  I'm just trying to remember and be better with the things I need to know while balancing the real life stuff.

As you will recall part of the test is to do the Bunkai.  Bunkai is a series of moves that come from the kata that acted out by two people.  One acts as the aggressor (they are the Uke) and they are the loser in the show.  I have ten kata so I have ten Bunkai to learn. So far in the process, they have not been the emphasis, so learning them has been a bit of a challenge.  We've only touched on them fleetingly so it feels like a struggle to learn them. 

The new wrinkle was that Olivia (my test partner) and I were told yesterday that we were now encouraged to make our own bunkai for the test!  This was is a fairly large change, but we now have till May to sort this out.  Olivia and I are supposed to invent them and then present them to the Sensei and he'll say good or use the standard.  In one or two cases we've decided to use the standard because there isn't anything that would be better.  But the whole shock here is that we getting this as an option.  This is normally set for the third and fourth degree folks.  

As part of the process we also needed to pick a theme.  Olivia is pushing for fast and specific, like a bird.  I like it, but I'll need to pick moves that I can do that look fast.  She's actually fast.  Hah.

Temperatures have finally dropped and we can breath outdoors again.  Too bad it means the fall is coming, but what a relief.

Orange Skies

The Thorn City is currently covered in a cloud of ash produced by the West coast fires.  Air quality is getting close to Beijing on a bad day.  So I'm definitely not encouraged to do anything vaguely athletic outside, but the skies are beautiful at sunrise and sunset. Well, there were up until last night when the view started looking like something out of bladerunner.

Even though we are getting to the point where we are all supposed to be wearing masks I slogged up to Sensei's house to practice.  He thankfully had the garage doors closed, but the garage felt like an oven.  We reviewed older kata and did our first few kata before time ran out.  

Part of Olivia and my home is to name the bunkai to help us remember what they are.  So far I've got:
- haku cho
- haku cho dai means on in the eye
- hakutsuru no Onna means go hard
- hakutsuru no Ottko means go soft (pretty hands)

I'm stuck there because it didn't really help me sort out what I was supposed to be doing, but it's a start.

Class was thankfully back in the airconditioned room and we more or less repeated the same things we did at BB class, but while I had Mark going through some fine tuning, Olivia, Reed and Daniel were practicing a three-man attack for competition.  It's based on Wando and although I couldn't see what was going on there did seem to be a lot of bodies in the air.  The problem with not going to the competitions is that I'm missing out on a lot integrational fun with the others.  

My next assignment is to figure out how to get video of the bunkai for better memorization.  

The Good Kind Of Sore

In my late twenties I wanted to be a body-builder.  I grew up long and thin and was incredibly self-conscious about it.  I hated wearing shorts when I was in high school because my knee joints were the largest part of my legs.  You could hang hats and coats off my hip bones.  Needless to say that drove me pretty hard to put on weight when I had the time to put into it.  Over the years I became "normal" and made many friends at the gym.  At one point I was working out with my friend Jerry, who was an actual competing body builder, I made the comment, "I can't wait to be big like you so I won't be sore anymore."

This was met with laughter combined with disbelief. 

"You know it's part of the process.  You'll continue to be sore forever.  You recognize it for what it is - muscle growth.  It's a bit masochistic,"  he said.

I can remember being so disappointed, but over the years I realized it was a built-in feedback mechanism.  If you did everything just right you grew, but if you overdid it, rest was the only thing that helped and that threw off your schedule. 

But I digress.  Due to small class sizes the last two classes have been dedicated to more self defense related material.  Last Wednesday Reed wanted to cover the advanced techniques his daughter would need to learn for her next exam.  Each of these included an Aikido wrist twist/takedown, followed by an arm bar.  Thankfully I'd done this in my old school, so a lot of the muscle memory still remains.  The lead-in's were all new, but it still meant that I had to take falls over and over again.  I wasn't too sore last Thursday, but today was a different story. 

My wife and I moved a 1000lb chicken house and poured cement for three days.  I went to class last night after moving 60lb bags of cement in the afternoon heat.  Thankfully, when I got to BB class we just worked on kata in front of the fans.  I was probably partially dehydrated, but did well considering it was basically a private lesson for an hour.  Car accidents, work and family issues got in the way of everyone else.

Regular class was just Reed, Jonah and me.  So it was back to take downs, trips and throws from the kata Rohai Shodan.  I had no idea there was so much to draw from, but it was a lot of fun.  I was fairly exhausted by the whole process of getting up over and over again. 

On the way home I drank two liters of water due to thirst, but that meant I'd have to get up in the middle of the night to pee.  Sure enough at 2 am I had to pry myself out of bed and was met with the stiffest body I've had in a while. 

When my alarm went off at 5:20 I was barely able to move.  My feet felt swollen and my legs and knees felt locked up.  After a warm shower (barely tolerable in the heat) I was able to move around.  After a few katas and some basic exercises I felt "normal" again.  I realized when I went up the steps at work I had that good kind of sore.  It lets you know your alive and you feel vitality through every move. 

Notes from the Long Slog

I'm not filled with the muse to write at the moment, but here are some notes.

It's been two weeks since I've been to class.  Good news is that the recent colonoscopy only had two pre-cancerous polyps - both removed.  I'm clear for another three years, but that was a missed class night.  I didn't come out of the anesthesia as well as I had before. Thankfully my wife drove.

With nine months ago, I imagine all I'm going to be writing about is test prep.  So katas and bunkai and probably not much else.  

Progress took a bit of a back step for me since I didn't practice as intensely as I should have while I was out.  This showed as we went through the newer kata.  Aggravating. 

Monday is kata night and basics night.  The bb class was at 90 degrees plus again.  I can't believe how much water I go through and still remain thirsty.  We managed to get through first five kata with their bunkai.

During regular class we worked on Wando most of the class, because we have a returning student from years ago, Jonah.  So it was a refresher for him and helped refine for me.

At the end Olivia and I worked with Daniel on Ni Pi Po.  I could only remember the first half and we ended up running through it many times for me.  They are very nice.

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.