Shotokanplanet.org

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

Karate Olympics again – 8/12/08 – Tuesday Karate class

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Was it Deja Vu or a bad dream?

Just when I thought it was over, it happened again…

Our class today was a repeat of the Saturday class.  Sensei Gatch had us do the same Karate Olympics that we did on Saturday.  You can read all about it on my previous post https://shotokanplanet.org/?p=322 .

We did the same four events and my results were as follows:

For the push up contest I was only about to muster up fifth place with 54 total push ups after across the two of the three 30 second sets.

For the V-sit event, I came in second place after holding my position for about seven minutes.

In the wall sit, I made it for almost three minutes but still had to do 50 squats since a couple people held out for 10 minutes.

In the sprint, I lost again and by just a nose.  I really need to spend some time working on my sprinting in the future.

Finish with kata…

Instead of doing Heian Shodan today, we did our own belt kata.  My Bassai Dai felt pretty good overall but I was just happy to be able to complete it.

Conditioning at the Karate Olympics – 8/9/08 – Saturday Karate class

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Four events means a lot of hard work…

In honor of the Olympics, Sensei Gatch held our own Karate Olympics.  This was an hour of all out conditioning that put Karate student against Karate student.

Three sets of timed push ups to failure…

We started with push ups.  For the first part of this three part event, Sensei had us do as many push ups and we could for 30 seconds.  I ended up with 34, the most in the group, in the first 30 seconds.  On the second 30 second test, I was able to do 22 push ups, which was the most in my group again.  For the third part of the event, I was only able to do 13 push ups.  One of the other students beat me on the third part by doing 16 push ups but my total of 69 beat his total of 67.  My arms and front deltoids were pretty much useless after the push ups.

V-sit and hold forever…

For the next event we got on to the floor and had to hold our legs up in the v-situp position for as long as possible.  I ended up winning this event by holding the position for longer than anyone else and over five minutes.  My abdominals never gave out buy my hip flexors felt like they were beaten with stick.

Wall sit or the dreaded invisible chair…

For this event we had to sit with our backs against the wall and hold for as long as possible.  Because my hip flexors already spent, I was only able to hold the position for about two minutes and 30 seconds.  I had to 50 squats because of the length of time that I held myself up.

Sprint or go home…

The last event was a good ole fashioned foot race.  Sensei Gatch put some pads as a finish line about three quarters of way across the gym.  We had to run agaist each other and the people who lost had to go to the other side of the gym and do low walks until everyone was done running the races.  I ended up losing to a young girl who is about 26 years younger than me but only by a couple of inches.

Kata…

After all the events we had to do a single kata.  Without much energy left, we all did Heian Shodan and even though I was really tired, it felt really smooth and relaxed.  Maybe I need to tire myself out for the next tournament or exam so that I can be so relaxed for kata?

Lots of roundhouse kicks – 8/5/08 – Tuesday Karate class

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Sensei Plocharczyk worked took us through some conditioning drills to help improve our roundhouse kicks.

Warm up…

Sensei had us start in a horse stance and had each of us count to 10 as we did various punches and blocks.  When all was said and done, we ended up holding the horse stance will 25 people counted out 10 movements which came out to at least five minutes.

Roundhouse kicks galore…

We then spent the rest of the class working on roundhouse kicks.

We started with two partners and threw very, very slow roundhouse kicks at the partner in the middle.  The first kick was low to the knee, the second to the stomach and the third to the head, or in my case the stomach again.  Doing the kicks so slow was extremely hard and my hip muscles were screaming after just a few of these kicks.  I really feel that I have weak hip muscles and this type of drill might be just the thing to get them strengthened up.

We stood between the two partners again and threw a power roundhouse at one partner with a large pad and then turned the other way and threw a precise roundhouse at the other partner holding a focus mitt.

I could hardly walk after this class but it is worth it.