Archive: I’m back :P
Source: Gisoku no Jutsu
Original post date: 27 May, 2007
Ack, apologies for the lack of blogging last week – between work and everything else, it’s been crazy.
Now, I know I was going to talk about my first karate lesson or bring up my previous Taekwondo experience when I was a kid, but I thought for today I’d simply go over last week’s training, because it was pure awesomeness 🙂
As I’ve brought up over the last couple of weeks’ blogs, I’ve been working on my leg stretching, and I reckon it’s finally paying off. Part of our training on Wednesday night last week was to spar with Sensei R with the aim being to go into a full offensive pattern aiming for his big punching pads he wore on his hands. Now in the past I would have gone into a routine with more emphasis on punches than kicks, but I was feeling pretty good about my kicks and thought this was an excellent opportunity to try it out. Not only was I impressed, but I think even Sensei R was surprised with how developed my kicks were – I was lunging with double-strike side kicks, thrusting side kicks, head-level front kicks, round kicks, crescent kicks, going from one to the next to the next with barely a break! It felt so good, so amazing to be able to pull it all off, and I came home feeling really proud of myself, like I’d really started to accomplish something.
The other thing I discovered whilst waiting outside at 10:30pm at night waiting for Baxter the Ninja Dog to do his business… because, you know, there’s nothing unusual for someone to randomly train their karate before they go to bed at night, leaving the neighbours to wonder why they keep hearing these random stomping noises as the foot on my artificial leg goes ‘PLONK!’ on the pavers 😛
Anyway, I was trying different kicks with my fake leg, and I stumbled across a jumping inside-out crescent kick I can do! I look a little goofy when I land, but it’s really cool 🙂 I’m not really sure how effective it would be in practice, but it’s great to be able to use my legs in this way. Hopefully with more practice I can get closer to trying butterfly and tornado kicks 🙂
Also, on Thursday night Wifey and I went over my parents’ place, and Tank and I went out the back yard to do kick training and stuff, which was awesome. He’s convinced me to take some video footage and post it up on MySpace showing some of my kicks (including my 360-degree vertical heel strike… well, that’s what I call it anyway :P), and I learnt the my forward kick with my real leg is actually more powerful than I thought. Oh, and I also helped Tank make is MySpace look awesomeness.
Well, hopefully next will be a little less crazy and I can post a few more blogs.