Saturday in the dojo was an interesting session, I learned maybe four things about both myself and my karate and they weigh out 50 - 50. On the positives, I think my health is improving again, and my control in pairs is improving ☺☺. On the negatives, I need to be pushing myself again and my kicking after exertion becomes very ragged 😞😞. However, the big idea plus that made the lesson for me was the idea of triangles, I suppose it had been there all along, but the penny dropped when we varied a regular drill later in the session ☺☺☺.
We started with a regular warm up, but since I had been warming up for 10 minutes or so whilst watching my son, maybe I didn't need to attack it quite as much and it told shortly after when we did a form of circuit training:
Jump stepping in and out of rope ladder steps, receiving pad strikes using jodan uke, running round the outsides of a cone circuit, receiving pad strikes with tudan uke, forward rolling break falls, followed by mai geris to the pads to close the circuit.
I ran out of stream at end of first circuit, and my kicks were ragged as a result. I sat out most of the rest, but was encouraged to rejoin, so did last half of circuit with better kicks though still not brilliant, so this is where I picked up the two negatives mentioned earlier: my ragged kicking after exertion and not re-joining without encouragement 😞😞.
Then it was time for Mokosu and formal start to the lesson, which opened with paired work with different partners. This included:
Light sparring in various forms, including kicks and punches, kicks only and punches only.
Paired continuous contact drills, including taking the inside, gripping and breaking grip, gripping and breaking then striking
Paired Kicking drill, receiving right mawashi geri, left mawashi geri, right mawashi geri catchi, right mawashi geri step back, return mawashi geri
This is where I found that I was definitely improving my control in paired work ☺☺. Was definitely so much better in the sparring and the kicking drill, well at least I thought so.
Then we were on to Kata - including Naihanchi Shodan tai chi style to open, I did performances of Naihanchi Shodan and Naihanchi Nidan (which I was corrected for performing too slowly, oops too much Tensho and not enough of this kata 😞). I went through forms of Naihanchi Sandan and Pinan Shodan, after which the higher grades did performances of their kata required for grading.
Then it was back to an old favourite to close out the session: The Quadrant drill (single person practice shown here)
What we did in this session was the Quadrant drill with variations, using an expressly triangle form to receive and counter, explicitly to the part of the drill with hammer fist followed by two hooks. It was there all along I suppose, but the transition from receiving to striking with the forearm or elbow seems so simple when explained this way ☺☺. Another variation was that after head butt, the agressor finishes with a shoulder barge which the other partner had to avoid.
All in all, another excellent session of the dojo, with the big plus being that I realise my my stamina seems to be improving ☺☺☺☺
