Karate 3rd kyu rank test today – 12/2/07

Tonight was my wifes and my rank test.

I never trained as hard for a test as I did for this one. I did so many Tekki Shodan katas that I even had dreams about it.

I was impressed with my wife tonight. She looked really good and I am sure that she did very well. She moves so much better than I do. If I could put her moves with my power, she would need to be registered as a lethal weapon.

We had a handful of movements for kihon:

• Moving forward and backward sanbon zuki.
• Moving forward and backward, rising block with reverse punch.
• Moving forward and backward, downward block and reverse punch.
• Moving forward and backward, outward block, jab with reverse punch.
• Moving forward and backward, inward block, horse stance elbow strike and backfist.
• Moving forward and backward, knife hand block, front snap kick and nukite.
• Moving forward, double front snap kick.
• Moving forward, double roundhouse kick.
• Moving forward, front snap kick and side thrust kick.

That doesn’t sound like a lot of movements but the person counting gave our row no rest between movements. When I got to the double front snap kicks, I was working in the no oxygen zone.

Next we did our kata. Kata felt good to me.

We then finished up with one-step sparring. I was happy to have one of the ladies that I often see at the tests as my partner. Since we know each other, it makes the one-step feel easier and takes a lot of the stress off. I felt very strong on my counter punches and even got her hair to move, much like when I do one-step with my wife.

I feel that I did well but I won’t know my results until Tuesday class. I am going to be climbing the wall for the next day and a half now.

I am already putting together my new training program for the next test. I am going to spend the next three months working on stances, kicks, kata and endurance training. I am going to ignore the upper body moments outside of class since those are not an issue. I am always being told that my upper body is solid and even to lower the power level a notch or two or more.

I am going to torture my legs and get my stances down low by doing some daily timed static stance work. For my kicks, I am going to do a lot of kicks and work on strengthening my hips. I will continue to do a lot of kata. I want to try and spend some time improving my lung capacity so that I can do the entire test without getting so winded. After, I did my kata, I could hardly catch my breath so I need to work on that aspect.

I have a lot of work ahead of me but I guess that is what Karate is all about, to me anyway.