I was reading a post over at EPIC Martial arts on padwork earlier (I’m trying to finally get back to reading up on what my fellow MA bloggers have been up to, they’ve been busy!), and it got me to thinking – padwork is awesome 😀

In my current style, we haven’t done a lot of padwork, but Sensei has mentioned introducing it a bit more recently. In my previous style we had the opportunity to do a bit of padwork, but it was mainly working on focusing/learning targeting for kicks and punches. Jon’s post discusses the effectiveness of training with doing padwork with real intent on both side of the equation – not just one person hitting a target continuously, but moving around, applying pressure, making you fight on both sides.

I see this as having plenty of benefits – first up, it helps train stamina, which is an essential attribute you need as a martial artist. It teaches you to target and focus under pressure. It makes you learn that fights are two-way interactions with your opponent, you can’t just fire out technique after technique without considering all the variables involved otherwise. And finally, it lets you practice heavy contact in a sparring scenario with relative safety.

Hopefully with all this I haven’t missed the point of Jon’s excellent post, so please drop by and have a look, it makes for great reading! I’m going to make a mental note to talk with my Sensei about this later on this week to see if we can do it, as I reckon padwork is awesome 😀

Bloginated Monday, 14th September 2009 / Karate
Tag-isms: padwork

So to wrap things up, I also thought I’d share something about my new kata.

In the past, I’ve really struggled with learning the pattern of kata, but this year I’ve been trying to go about learning kata a bit differently. First up, I’m trying hard to apply much greater focus in class and keeping myself from getting distracted or relaxing or taking things too easy. When I first started learning my previous grade-kata, I experimented with this and found that I was able to pick up the kata much faster than I usually would. Following my last grading I’ve been working on my focus even more and am trying to make every session of regular training as intensive as possible, trying to match the same dedication and effort you typically put into a grading but in an everyday class scenario. And the same goes for my kata – focus-focus-focus.

And strangely enough, it appears to be very effective – last week was the first time learning my kata, and by the end of the lesson I’d managed to memorise the basic pattern. True, my form was pretty poor, but I was still managing to work on my breathing and put in focused energy into some of the techniques. It was actually kind of amazing, as I entered that tarnce-like state of awareness you can often get when performing kata despite the fact I was still very early on in my understanding of it.

As a result, I came away feeling really chuffed that I’d manage to make such a productive first step in learning my new kata. True, part of being able to pick it up relatively quickly can also be attributed to greater experience and being able to tune into the patterns in other Heian kata, but I also think my attention to detail and my focus were big parts of this, and it’s always nice to find that, despite what you may think sometimes, you are improving as time goes on, you are evolving as a martial artist… even if you habitually look a bit unco 😉

Now I have to hope that I’ll be in good form next week! Will have to put some time aside between classes to go through the sequences, I don’t want to put this good start to waste.

Bloginated Friday, 11th September 2009 / Karate
Tag-isms: kata

So, continuing on from my previous post, at training last week we started focusing on improving mawashi geri technique as it’s now formally graded as part of my syllabus, which means more practicing and more focus on improving the technique. Unfortunately for me, my mawashi geri is pretty rubbish, especially when kicking with my right leg (i.e. the real, whole one :P). Since you’re required to rely on extra flexibility and coordination with your standing leg for this one, I’ve always struggled with it as it’s really difficult to balance on my fake leg. Then you add hip movements, shifting weight using your knee and ankles, adjusting pressure with your foot – all this I can feel when balancing on my right leg and kicking with my left, so it’s hard trying to compensate for such a difficult series of complex, subtle movements.

So following class, I’ve been breaking the technique back to basics, and as I do my infamous “karate-around-the-house” habit that drives Wifey up the wall, I’ve started incorporating mawashi geri in stages. For the most part this has been in volving my lifting my right leg with the leg drawn back, but with my bent leg held parallel to the floor and hold my balance. I felt that part of my problem was that I was having trouble gracefully moving into the motions of the mawashi geri, and by working on the first step in performing the technique, I’m aiming to improve part of the foundation for the technique.

The next challenge is controlling the whipping-out/whipping-back motion so that the technique can be performed as close as possible in light of my situation. Stupid me forgot my recent post on how to do a better mawashi geri, which of course contained that extra bit of info I needed to overcome the lack of control with the fake leg – use the torso and the arms to make up for the difference. I then put it all to test while walking around the house last night before going to bed, and it made a world of difference.

But seriously, trust me to forget something I actually wrote about that would have been hugely helpful in this case 😛

So, next training I’m hoping to show a reasonable degree of improvement with this technique. Unless I forget it again, which is entirely possible 😛

Bloginated Friday, 11th September 2009 / Karate, Technique
Tag-isms: kicks | mawashi geri

Didn’t end up making it to training this week – I was being a good son and caught up with the family for my mum’s birthday on the usual night I train, and on the alternate night we have training available I was home from work that day because my stump’s been flaring up again, so spending an evening doing karate would have been far from productive in rectifying the situation 😛 Very rude and inconvenient of my stump to flare up like that. Mind, the issues with my stump are well and truly subject material for other posts, so I’ll leave it here.

Anywho, on the training side of things – again, was another really good session, I’m finding that ever since the last grading I’ve been trying to add extra focus and energy into each lesson and it’s really paying off, or at least that’s how I’ve been feeling. There’s always that old adage that a lot of karateka note – you only get out what you put into your training, and if you don’t train every class like how you perform during your grading, you won’t grow as a martial artist. While the claims are lofty if I’m trying to say I’m living up to this in any way, I’m hoping that by training and committing myself with this elevated level of dedication, I’ll be able to progress at a greater rate… I found that when I was training throughout 2008 that I wasn’t putting in that dedicated, focused energy into my training that I’ve been working hard on achieving this year. Hopefully I’m starting to get there since I took note of how I worked during my previous grading and have started trying to apply this to each training session I attend.

… if nothing else, it is at least a good ideal to work towards 🙂

I’ve also got some thoughts to post on getting started on my next kata and on my mawashi geri technique, which I’ll tuck into tomorrow (hence the “a post in three parts” bit in the title) – it’s getting late so Wifey and I are off to bed!

Bloginated Thursday, 10th September 2009 / Karate
Tag-isms: stump | Technique | training

In an attempt to stave off the temptation to post about old video games on this blog, I’ve finally put the finishing touches on a companion blog where I can keep the off-topic stuff siphoned away to an appropriate place 🙂

I’ve given the new blog an appropriately nerdy name – RetroOtaku – and you can check it out in all its awesomeness at http://nerdisms.gisoku-budo.com/ if you’re so inclined. At this stage I’m not sure how often I’ll be updating it, but it’s there for when I want to wax lyrical about video games and junk 😉

The good news is that now I’m finished putting it together I can get back to blogging here more regularly, which I’ve been pretty lax with of late. Apologies to the regulars checking out this site, I’ll get back into the swing of things over the next week!

Oh, and if you forget about the URL, you’ll find the site linked under ‘Companion blogs’ in the side bar!

Bloginated Tuesday, 8th September 2009 / Blogs/websites
Tag-isms: RetroOtaku