Was a really good session, especially since it’s been a few weeks since I last trained. I worked hard, and we covered some really good ground. I’ve also started on learning my new syllabus, which is a mixture of old techniques refined further, as well as new techniques and combinations. I feel a little unco at this point, but to be honest, it’s only been one lesson, so I think it’s a little stupid to assume I’m going to get it first up

We also did some really awesome two-person drills involving striking/blocking/countering combinations. It was a little different to some of the typical drills I’ve done in the past which were relatively static block/counter, rinse and repeat. The drills we did relied on flowing from defense/offense, starting with parry, flow though with a block to control the opponents arm… then something else ( ), then strike your partner and they do the same thing. I’m definitely not doing the drill justice here, but the end result was that the drill started resembling kenpo and some Chinese martial arts rather than “traditional” karate… which it turns out was Sensei’s intention all along, so I felt a bit clever afterwards for picking up on what he was aiming to get us to see in the drills we were doing.

Another part of the good stuff that came out of the lesson was that I got to train with one of our brown belts, and he’s keen on pushing things a bit harder in class, which is perfect as I’m always up for challenging myself. Typically in these kind of blocking drills you habitually mangle your forearms through all the striking. Back when I used to train in the previous style, if I was doing these drills with Jyastin-kun, Tank or Buu-Adam we’d normally go pretty full-on and come out with crazy bruised arms and stuff, and it was a stack of fun. While my arms are only mildly bruised (indicating that I think I need to do more body-conditioning training, which I’m pretty sure Sensei’s keen to increasingly put into our training in class, so fingers crossed!), it was good fun, but I definitely could do with going through these drills more often. Same for my shin as well, it could probably do with getting used to being bashed about a bit more often

So yeah, great training – looking forward to training again this week

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3. Training roundup