In my ever ending quest to improve my flexibility, I spend a good amount of time stretching on Saturday. My son assists our Sensei’s with a couple of classes and I like to stretch while sitting there.

I spend a lot of time working my side splits since one of my main goals is to prove that old people like me can still do the splits. I have a long way to go but I am seeing improvement in both my flexibility and my side height of my side thrust and roundhouse kicks. I also work on my hamstrings even though my front snap kicks are good.

Today I did:

Butterflies – I sit with my back against the wall while doing them because I feel that I get a better stretch.
Side splits – I also try to lean my back against the wall but I also lean forward to get what feels like a better stretch. I spend a good amount of time in that position moving my legs farther apart as I relax. I do another variation where I lay on my back and put my legs up on the wall. I cannot hold this position for a long time, around five minutes of so because of gravity forcing my legs down.
Hamstring stretch – I sit on the floor with my leg straight out in front of my. I lean forward and either grab my toes or put my arms on the floor on the outside of my legs. I get the added benefit of a deep calf stretch from this movement too.

I also do a similar simple stretching workout before class on Tuesday and it seems to really help even thought it is very simple.

Very hard classes tonight!

The first class was all kata. We started with a kata warm up. We did Heian Shodan, Heian Nidan, Heian Sandan and Heian Yondan. After that, we worked on Heian Godan and parts of it. Everyone was hunching their shoulders on the first move and after doing it a handful of times, that problem was corrected. For some reason, I felt good doing that kata today. Normally, Heian Godan is not and never has been one of my better kata but today, it felt right. One part that my Sensei told me to fix was just before the kai, I needed to stay low when moving forward just before the kai. I was able to focus on that problem and was able to do it correctly all the other times we did the kata. My hips were really working well, I able to execute the groin strike and block with a different power and accuracy that I have in the past. The move felt really strong and getting my hips around and into a good stance felt almost automatic.

After Heian Godan, we spent the rest of the class working on Tekki Shodan. My horse stance felt low and I was able to hold without tiring as easily as I did in the past. I was having a little problem with my coordination at first but then things started to come together and I was able to actually get some body shock working in some of the moves. We must have done at least 10 if not more Tekki Shodan in a row. Some were slow motion and some were full speed and power.

The next class started with conditioning torture. We spent a lot of time on the warm up, jogging back and forth across the gym caused my right calf to cramp up so I sat down for a while until it went away. The amount of water that I sweat out is unreal but that’s another story.

We then moved into a few minutes of Kihon. We did rising block, downward block, inward block all with reverse punch with no rest in between. It wasn’t a huge amount of repetitions but it was enough to tire the entire class very quickly.

After that ended, we moved on to something new. Our Sensei pulled out the workout bands and had everyone work on front punch and draw hand. We had our partner hold the band and we would do punches. My friend Robert and I were trying to beat each other when doing our repetitions and it made it more interesting and took our minds off of the pain of the movement.

Next, our partner held their hands in an open circle shape, in front of their abdominals and we had to punch, full power and speed without hitting any part of their hands. If we hit their hands, it was three push ups every time we hit them either on the way in or out. I did pretty well and out 30 punches, I only did 12 push ups meaning I only hit my partners hand four times.

We also ended up doing a lot of push ups today. after our arms were spent with all the punches, he would make sure that they were totally toasted and have us do push ups. Luckily, push ups are easy for me since I have done a zillion bench presses in my life but some of the others were begging for mercy.

After that, our Sensei felt that he should keep everyone from walking so he had us do low walks and many other things. After the first couple sets of low walks my calf cramped again and I ended up watching everyone else do them. I guess I need to get back to doing my lunges at the gym again.

Overall class was very hard but really productive for me.