Moved back to blogger.

Sorry everyone, but I’ve moved back to blogger. Follow me please!

saturday class 0414

Deja Vu.  Yesterday we did exactly the same drills as we did in last saturdays class.  So all the bruises that were starting to fade are revived!  yay!  bruises on top of bruises.  Oh they are lovely!

Anyway, then I had weapons and learned Tokemini.  What a cool bo kata.  A little challanging because there are a lot of hand switching going on.  I’m not used to that.  my hands do not want to switch.  I’ll make them switch, though.   And my son does this bo kata flawlessly so I made him write it down as soon as we got home. 

saturday classes

So I went to a couple classes yesterday.  The first was the regular all levels noontime class.   Its spring, so we’ve been working on lots of leg strengthening drills-powerkicks, focus kicks, etc, and arm conditioning.  Because when its spring, and you want to start wearing short sleeves, its always nice to have bruises up and down your arms.  So we partnered up.  I was partnered with a very nice lady who is an orange belt.  First we had to do kicking.  We had to stand left foot to left foot,  left hand holding left hand, and kick.  one person would do 1 roundhouse kick to the head, then the other person would do it.  then 2 roundhouse kicks, then the other person would do 2 (bringing the foot down to touch the floor between each kick)  then 3, all the way up to 10.  This builds up a lot of strength in the hip area.    After that we did arm conditioning.  Face your partner and basically whack the hell out of each others arms.   I can’t even try to explain these drills. After that we worked on swim blocks.  Now, I suck at those, but I’m getting better.  My partner was doing really well, except for the fact that she kept anticipating my kick and doing the block too soon(which we’ve all done).   When she did that,  her elbow would get me right on the top of my foot.  the pointy part of her elbow would come down right into the delicate bones and skin on the top of my foot.  many times.  both feet.   She kept apologizing. I kept saying-”thats ok-no problem….you’re doing great”  (wimper) 

so my next class was weapons.  I love this saturday weapons class because it is mostly adults (the youth class is earlier and is PACKED) and some teens, and there’s never too many people to really crowd the floor.  There’s nothing worse than trying to swing a 6 foot bo around in a crowded class.  So I’m almost ready to learn the 5th bo kata which is (i think) Tokomeni No Kun.  I have to have my son practice that one and write it down on paper for me.  He did that with Ten Ryu no kun and it makes it so much easier to practice at home.  When i learn these kata at the dojo, by the time I get home, its pretty much gone from my memory (except bits and pieces) which makes it really hard to practice.   So after I learn this 5th bo kata, I get to start learning nunchucks.   I have a set of wooden nunchucks.  I also have a set of foam nunchucks that I stole from my daughter who used to take karate.  Maybe I’ll also wearing my sparring headgear when I practice heh heh heh.  I do know of a woman in our dojo (2nd degree now) who when practicing her nunchucks at home in her living room, knocked herself out cold with them.  That must have been a shocker.   My son is pretty good at nunchucks, so hopefully he can write down Dandu for me when I start learning it.  For now, I’ll just practice figure 8’s with the foam ones.

Happy Easter!

Tourney pictures

Here is me doing Chinto.   chinto1.jpg

Here is my son, performing Power bo 1.  There were only a few pictures that you can see the bo, otherwise it was spinning so fast it just came out as a blur.cpowerbo1.

A few of my son sparring-cspar3.jpg cspar4.jpg  cspar6.jpg

Me-Shushi no kun-shushinokun.jpg

Me sparring- yeah, i’m the one in white.  mspar2.jpg

It took me 2 weeks to figure out how to post these without them either being tiny and out of focus, or too big to fit in the blog.

Quick update

The tournament went very well- I was happy with how I did. There were way more in our division than  I thought there would be.  There were about 8 women in the BB division, most of them outranked me.  I was eliminated in sparring my first match.  Oh well, I felt good about it because I lost to a 3rd degree who is about 20 yrs younger than I am.   My bo kata and Chinto went well.  I made a couple minor mistakes but overall I was pleased with my performance.  My son, on the other hand, won a first place trophy for sparring.  He is good.   My sister took a lot of pictures so I will post some, probably this weekend when I have more time.

Tournament 3/18/07

So today is the 8th annual St Patrick’s day tournament.  For black belts if you sign up, it counts as a QQS.  Even if you sign up just to judge, or timekeep, or scorekeep it still gets counted as a QQS (the quarterly black belt testing).  So what do I do?  I signed up to compete.  I had a moment of insanity and I signed up for all 3 divisions.  Weapons, Kata and Sparring.  My son is also signed up, he will be in those 3 divisions plus team sparring.  This tournament involves several schools, by invititation only.  There have been some years that have involved schools that have not been invited back.  Renshi does not like schools that teach their students to fight dirty.   He wants it to be a positive experience for everyone.  Of course, there will always be parents complaining about something, but for the most part he wants to feel comfortable with all the schools he invites. 

so anyway, I will be doing Chinto for my kata & Shushi no kun for my bo kata.  My sister will be there taking pictures so I’ll post some this week (as long as I don’t look like too much of an idiot in the photos haha).  My son will be doing Itosu Passai for his kata, and some freakishly long complicated bo kata that I can’t remember the name of.  It will be fun.  All the demo teams compete too-that’s a really great part of the competition.  One of the schools demo teams usually use ornamental japanese fans in their demos-so cool looking. 

ok. gotta go wipe down my sparring gear.

Sucking wind

So I finally kicked up enough bravery to spar last night.  I haven’t sparred since September and I could feel it.  First of all, the warm up part of the class was really tough.  I felt like I did back when I first started sparring as a blue belt.  There were several blue and green belt women who had not sparred in a while also (admittedly due to fear).  At the beginning of class Renshi said.. “I know there are some of you who haven’t sparred in a while, so …we’ll just consider you fresh meat”  (joking of course)  The warm up part of sparring class constisted of working techniques on your own first-we were working all the basics- high block-reverse punch;  check, reverse punch;  backfist, reverse punch, high roundhouse kick to the head; step back side kick; shuffling in and out….Then we worked all those the same drills with a partner, focusing on timing.  Then we started sparring and not too long into my first match I had to slow it down because I couldn’t breathe.   I had to keep taking my mouth guard out just to get a deep breath.  Renshi told me to slow it down.   As far as skills go, sparring is like riding a bike.  At least I didn’t lose any of the techniques or skills that I had acquired over the past few years which I was afraid would happen. (not that I had LOTS of that, mind you, but what I had before, I still had last night.)  I wore my new forearm/elbow guards which helped a lot(mentally and physically).  Bottom line is I have to re-build my stamina.  I think running definitely helps.  But its so freakin cold outside. (whiner)  At any rate, last night I came out of there looking like a sweaty tomato with a body.  AND -despite taking a  shower when I got home, I was still actively sweating for at least another hour.  Yeah, I’m rusty.  I’m a rusty tomato head.

Speed Kata

Class was fast last night.  Not to say that it went by fast, but everything was done reallllly fast.  There were at least 30 in class, Renshi taught.  Shihan was in the first position.  So when we do kata as a group (instead of counted out) its drilled into our heads to follow the speed of whoever is in the first position (the highest rank in the class).  Now normally, the person in the first position will go at a slower methodical pace so that the students who normally try and blast thru the kata learn to take it slower.  Well I guess last night was “opposite night” because Shihan seemed to go as fast as he possibly could.  Infact, right before class I saw Renshi talking to Shihan and big teddy bear (3rd dan-HUGE man, but very sweet-has a busy life and comes to class when he can)  who was in the second position.  I think Renshi was behind this.   Shihan  NEVER goes that fast.  NEVER!   So why?  even Sensei A felt we were being tested somehow.  Any ideas anyone? 

2/12/07

I missed karate the second half of last week because I was in a car accident.  Not hurt, just had a sore/stiff neck and back.  I really would like a boring, un-eventful life.  Pretty please?  Any way, I also missed belly dancing.  :(  So nothing to report there.  I got an email from M-an update on the testing cycle.  I guess CB (the crier) AND both of her daughters walk the track on saturdays instead of running it.   what the heck is wrong with the daughters that they can’t run either?  They don’t do the commando crawls or duckwalks or any of the other torture either.  Weird. 

So I’ll probably go to Renshi’s class tonite.  I really hope we don’t do bunkai.  It seems as though he’s been trying to get everyone up to where he thinks we should be on bunkai so its been part of every class, practically.  Oh well, whatever.  practice makes better, right?

Belly dancing-class # 2

More belly dancing on friday night.  We learned how to undulate.  Do you know that when you undulate, you actually have to stick your belly out??   WHAT?  I spend most of my waking hours trying to suck it in.  This is not easy.  Belly dancing is hard!  and shimmy-ing?  HA!  I can’t shake that fast.  Maybe by May when the next black belt ceremony is, I will have “gotten” this.  That is when we’ll do the demo.  heehee.  I ordered my hip scarf from the instructor- I’m getting a red one with gold jingly coins on it.  And there are already people complaining to Renshi about the fact that there will be a belly dancing demo.  I can’t believe the amount of people who complain about things that really aren’t their business to complain about.  I mean, if you have a kid in karate and you want to complain about something regarding his/her training, that is one thing.  But the Black Belt Spectacular is Renshi’s show.  It is the chance for him to not only show off his graduating black belts, and show all sorts of karate demos, but to show what else they do at his studio.  And what does he say about the complaints he’s getting?  Nothing.  he’s having the demo ANYWAY.  He smiles and nods and is very polite, but ultimately it is his show and he’ll show what he wants to show.   He’s awesome.