Shotokanplanet.org

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

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.

Tuesday Karate class – 12/4/07 – New rank for my wife and I, 3rd Kyu!

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There are days that just couldn’t be better and today was one of them.

After three and a half years of hard work, both my wife and I were promoted to 3rd Kyu today.  We took our test on Sunday and revieved our results in class today.

It’s funny how many people say that getting a new belt or rank doesn’t make you any better than before but I have to admit, I felt much different in class tonight that I have in a long time.  I know that I didn’t physically improve in the last two days since my test but mentally, I think things went up a notch.

Class was really good tonight and not just because of the new rank.

We spent the first part of class working on some anchorman drills.  One of us would stand in front of the line and block and counter the attacks from the rest of the people in the line, one at a time.  My friend Robert is always a challenge.  He is second kyu, soon testing for 1st kyu, and he and I always try to trick each other.  He moves really well and really likes to throw a double kick of roundhouse and hook kick to jodan at me or sweep me but since I have learned his signature moves, he tires some new moves now.  I was able to block his first couple attacks but he tricked me on the third one and scored.

After that, we took off the pads and worked on one-step sparring.   Since my wife and I were third kyu’s, we got to attack the 1st and 2nd kyu’s and they blocked and  countered.

Next came the really fun part, we got to work on kata.   It’s not like we never worked on kata before but it was time to do Jion.  I have wanted to do Jion for a long time and finally, it is time to learn it.  Even though I have practiced Jion for a few months now, it is finally my current rank kata.  Sensei Noia took us through each move of Jion, step by step but before that, he had us do all of the Heian kata’s and Tekki Shodan.  Doing all of those kata’s really gets me warmed up.

We did our first Jion very slow, while following along with Sensei Noia.  Next we did it again at medium speed and then full speed.  After that, Sensei Noia worked on Bassai Dai with the other brown belts and my wife and I did Jion three or four more times on our own.

Great class!

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

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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.