Small group, great training

Another week, and another small class. Wasn’t a bad thing though, as it gave Jyastin-kun and I plenty of time to work on basic techniques and combinations. I know it may sound a bit silly, but even going back to basics and concentrating on taking simplistic techniques but approaching them with an ever-increasing view to advance the technique has been really interesting. During training Sensei was getting us to perform simple punching or kicking drills/combinations. However, he was checking with us that we were showing signs of advanced principles to these basic motions.

Take a standard oitsuki (reverse punch). This time when doing it, aside from using linear motion and kinetc energy, we was looking at how we were distributing our weight as part of the technique, and taught us the importance of lowering our mid-section at the end of the technique. This achieved a stronger stance when the amount of outgoing energy is arguably at its most volatile, as it shifted the weight closer to the ground, which meant you didn’t wobble about as much if you were straight-up and created a stronger connection to the floor, ensuring greater efficiency (i.e. less loss) of kinetic energy as part of the technique. I’ve probably made it sound a bit long-winded, so sorry about that!

Aside from that, we also worked on controlling strength, balance and control with our kicking technique, with Sensei again emphasising the importance of a strong stance. Without it, the amount of energy expelled into the target will simply bounce back into the attacker and knock you off your feet or severely deplete the amount of energy being delivered into the strike. Control your stance and weight/balance, and you achieve not only great efficiency with the technique itself, you control the flow of kinetic energy so it doesn’t float back into your mid-section and throw you off balance. Rather, it forms a continuous line from the ground, up your leg connected to the ground, through your centre and your kicking leg, and into your opponent. Keep the stance strong, and the energy only flows along that path back and forth, or ultimately it travels between the ground and the opponent. While the target itself may not falter from the attack, by controlling yourself thus you ensure that you remain the conduit of the flow of kinetic energy, rather than the foundation it relies on to bounce back and forth.

Or at least that’s how I visualise it in my crazy brain 😛

Anywho, aside from that we also got into some basic drill-work, and after class Jyastin-kun and I had the chance to have a quick chat to Sensei before we left for the night. With class sizes shrinking the last couple of weeks, I hope I’m not going to curse the club and break it like I’ve blogged about before 😛 Hopefully we’ll be getting back up to normal sizes soon! In the meantime though, I’ll keep enjoying the excellent individual instruction we’ve been lucky enough to get!

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Archive: Bummer

Source: Gisoku no Jutsu
Original post date: 1 September, 2007

Interesting thing happened this week – went to karate on Wednesday night, and nobody was there!! I knew numbers were low, I guess over the last 8 weeks of absence the class must have closed up if there weren’t enough people attending. Bummer 🙁

But, rather than getting bogged down, I’ve started looking elsewhere. I’m looking to jump into another school, either shotokan or goju ryu, but I reckon goju ryu might be my preference if I can find one in my area. I’m trying to stay away from mixed or freestyle karate – I recognise that these might be broader in application and I intend no disrespect to those who practice these styles, but for me, I still want to train within a traditional framework. I’m going to check out a class near where I live next week, and the advantage is that they train multiple nights a week, have affiliation with some of the broader national groups, and also offer traditional karate/Okinawan weapon training as well, which is ace as I’ve always been keen on doing some weapon training – bo, sai, nunchuku, kama, it’s all good. I’ll post my thoughts next week, but I’ve already talked to Jyastin-kun and he’s pretty stoked to see what it’s like. We’ll be starting again at 10th kyu, but that’s okay – the syllabus will be different anyways, and I’ll hopefully be able to breeze through the first few kyu before I hit where I used to be.

Oh, and as an aside, I’ve thrown up a heap of new training pics – feel free to have a look and leave some comments if you want, it’s all good 🙂 There’s some cool mid-air shots Wifey captured that I thought looked pretty awesome, I’m really happy with how they turned out. Oh, and note the awesome Activision t-shirt I was wearing on the day that Tank and Meru got me for my birthday – retro awesome 🙂

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