Shotokanplanet.org

This is a log of my journey to Shotokan Karate Shodan and beyond.

Archives for February 2008

Tuesday Karate class – 2/19/08 – Kihon and kata.

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Today was my kind of class.

For some reason, I enjoy doing kihon more than anything else lately.  I like the idea of going back to basics and todays class did not disapoint.

Sensei Noia had us start with simple moving forward front punch.  He had a do the first ten moves forward going slow and then five or six more at full speed and power.  He then had us do the same movement, ten times backward and then another five or six at full speed and power.  We used the same repitition scheme for rising block, downward block, inward block, outward block and front snap kick and back stance with knife hand block.

After that, Sensei had us make some room and do one, of our current rank, kata very slowly.

After the kata,  we went back to some more kihon.  Sensei had us work on our focus while doing these basics.  The idea was do any movement that we wanted, at full speed and power, while he and the other Sensei’s walked around and tried to break our concentration.  I lost my focus two times.

We finished up class with one last kata at full speed and power.  My Jion felt pretty good but my mind and body was so spent from all the kihon, I don’t think it was as powerful as usual.

It was a great class and I hope that we have some like this one again.

Jennifer Malloy Memorial Tournament – 2/17/08

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Today was our clubs annual Jennifer Malloy Memorial Tournament. Jennifer Malloy was a young karate-ka who loved Karate with her heart and soul before loosing her battle with cancer at the age of only 13. This is a good sized local tournament and there are some really good competitors both from our club and a few other clubs, plus some of the proceeds from this event goes to help financially support young up and coming karate-ka much like Jennifer.

It was a good day for my wife and son. My son took first place in the Kihon competition and looked really good. My wife took home a forth place trohpy for Kata. She has some issues with her back but she was still able to do well enough to bring something home.

I didn’t do too well, not winning anything today but even though I would like to win, I still like to enter the tournaments. I did have one moment of goodness, when I did my first kata of the day, Jion, I got three out of three flags in my favor against a first Kyu who did Bassai Dai. I felt that I did the absolute best Jion that I have done yet. I lost my second chance at kata to the person that took second place overall and my third kata, I made a mistake on one of my moves and it broke my concentration for the rest of the kata.

This might be my last tournament for some time to come. My son is going to be in a different class starting at the next tournament and the time that he goes on will overlap with the time that my wife and I go on for our group. I don’t want to miss him compete and I like to video tape him so I might be out for a while.

Either way, it was a good day and I got to see some of my friends that I only see at tournaments.

Friday Karate class – 2/15/08 – Kata for some of us.

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Sensei Noia took all of the people who wanted to spar and Sensei Gatch took the rest of us for some kata work.

We started with Heian Godan for our 5th kyu’s.  Sensei had us start in slow motion.  Next, he had us do the kata with very short stances.  The idea was to do the kata but keep our feet in about a two foot by two foot area.  I am not sure why he had us do this but it was a challenge not to take the normal long stances.

Next, we started working on Jion.  Doing it very slowly and paying extra attention to our form is harder than it sound, at least to me.  When moving slowly, I can really focus on my stances and hip rotation.

After that, we finished up with each of us doing on kata by ourselves in front of Sensei.  The only problem that I felt was the gym was cold and I wasn’t able to put out the same kata as I do when I am warm.