Karate Rank

Well, I survived the demo at class last night. Made a few dumb errors but lucky for me the teacher does not use this as the test. She has been testing me for a few weeks now on the stuff I need to know for Brown belt.

Got my new belt last night. . . Now with a bit of luck and if I can study enough I may be able to go for my first degree black next spring!

Woo Hoo

Karate & Sleep Depravation

Note to self – when your 18 month old gets you up at three AM it will have a effect on your karate class at 7PM. . . . and not in a good way. Talk about being a bit off. . . .
But we did still manage to get through the drills and the new kata we are working on. I must admit I bailed on leading the warm ups though and the teacher was nice enough to take pity on me and let me off on that one. . .

Had a better nights sleep and I’m feeling much better now. . . .

Take a Fall

While sitting in Karate class yesterday trying to teach a new Green Belt how to do a proper fall it hit me. Out of all the things you learn in any of the styles of Karate that are out there probably the most important or at lest the one you are most likely to use is learning how to fall.

I have always been good at this, it just sort of came to me and I have to say that it has saved my butt on a number of occasions. Between dodging kids toys in the house in the dark or walking on the lovely New England winter Ice and Snow it is a rather useful thing to know.

We started him with the basics, just a simple roll backwards and catching himself on the mats. You start by sitting on your heels and just letting yourself roll back. You stop the fall with your arms out at about a 45 deg angle and by tucking your chin to your chest to protect the back of your head. You want to keep your arms fully extended so you can slap down with your palm and forearms, if you land on your elbows or hands you can hurt yourself. . .

Anyway we got him started. It is amazing how many people are afraid to fall. Unfortunately that seems to be part of the problem, cause then you tighten up and really hurt something instead of going with it. . .

Ah well, that is the useless info for today. Another class tonight if I am lucky. . .

Green Belt Blues

I am at the point where I just don’t seem to be making progress. It seems to hit just before going for brown belt. You train, go to class, and work on the corrections from the teacher but it just don’t sink in.

I hate it. It gets depressing to know that you should know how to do something, have practiced it but you still mess up.

Well, this too will pass but I can’t wait for it to be over. I am looking forward to getting my brown belt at some point, who knows when but I will get there. This is the hardest part of Karate, sticking with it when you feel like you just can’t get it. . . .

Humility and Karate

The other night my teacher had me join her at another school for some extra training with a different teacher. The idea being that as I get ready to go for my brown belt in this style it would be good to get input from a few different teachers on what I need to work on.

Well, let me tell you it is a quick lesson in humility. After working on this style for a bit over two years now I thought I had the basics down. It is amazing all the small corrections someone can point out when they have not been working with you. It was quite the wake up call.

Now I am happy that most of the corrections were small stuff, so that was good but it does hit you right in the ego. All that stuff I thought I was doing so great? Ya, still needs work.

That is one of the good and bad things about Karate I think, no matter how much you train and work on things, there is always something you could do better. It is not like a college where you get your grade and move on. You are always trying to tweak things a bit here and there to get better. There is always something you could be working on no matter how many years you have studied. Personally I think this is good, it keeps one’s head from getting too big, but I think it also may be the reason so many folks start the martial arts then quit. It is one of the few things you start but will never finish. . . . and the funny part is sometimes it is the master that points out what you need to fix, and sometimes it is the new guy that just started.

Karate Demo

We had our Karate Demo last night at the school and it went really well. My youngest daughter got her next rank, two yellow stripes on her white belt. She was psyched!

She did her first Kata with the other kids in front of the parents and friends and it looked good. She is coming right along with her Karate and getting better and better. She really enjoys it and has a perfect attendance after her first year with the school.

We also got school T-Shirts and my daughter thought it was great that her and dad now have the same school shirts! I am thrilled that she is into karate as it is turning into something we can share like I do when I go shooting with my oldest daughter.

I also got my next rank, so I now have my green belt with brown bar. I was told I would be going with my teacher to some other schools to get feedback from other teachers and soon I will have to test for my Brown Belt.

Things are going well for both of us in class and it is great to see the progress with these demos. Now, I have lots of studying to do for my next test. . . .

Lessons I still need to learn

Had an interesting class last night at Karate. It was just me and one other student (who is ratehr new) with the teacher. I managed to get mad at myself when I kept catching myself thinking critical things about this kid who is trying to learn Karate and has obvious balance issues.

Now I am sure he will get past them with the Karate if he sticks to it. You will may no end up with perfect balance from it but I have to think it will improve like any other ability with practice. . . Now if I can just keep reminding myself that I need to relax and just deal with my own issues ( I know I have plenty to work on) in class and stop thinking about what others are doing. . .

The other learning moment was that I am still doing everything like a Shotokan person not a Shohei person should. . . by that I mean that the new style is hard/soft and Shotokan is a very hard style. When going through drills with my teachers she pointed out how I don’t have the soft side of the style down and need to work on it (a lot. . .). Instead of the nice circular blocks I was doing a hard block/strike which is very Shotokan. Unlike the hard Shotokan style the Shohei style has soft almost Kung Fu like blocks then a hard strike follows up. . . Another day another lesson hopefully learned. . . now for a few years of practices so I can actually do it without thinking about it. . . .

Karate Update

Big news of the day around here. . . . My younger daughter got her next rank at Karate today!!!!

She now has two yellow stripes and she also got an award for perfect attendance too!!!

We are all very proud of her and she is just bouncing at her new rank. I talked a bit with the teacher on it and was told she was doing very well with her focus and her first kata Sanchin is really good. Considering how much trouble she has staying on task some times this is all great news!!

Had to brag about it. . . . . It's a Dad thing. . .

Karate - study in psychology

Ran into an interesting issue at Karate last night.

I was asked by my teacher to go over a sword drill I showed them. We had two “new” students to our class, they both normally take a different class. I started off showing the drill with the teacher then with another student who knows it and all seemed to go well. We then started to break it down into parts to teach the new folks. This is where it got interesting for me.

Background - The school I learned the drill in was a Shotokan school and the teacher was not a bit concerned explaining what each move with the sword was, and what you were trying to do. . . such as cut the other person’s head off to be blunt about it.

Now as we went over the first part of the drill I was trying to explain how to hold the sword, what the moves were, how to block, and how to cut. This included where you were trying to cut as we went through the drill.

The two students I was teaching this to for the first time are both were women for whatever that is worth in this discussion. One of them took to it rather well the other got a little squeamish as we went through the drills. Now the one that took it well is a higher rank, and the other one has been doing this a year or so I would guess. The student that had a problem was trying to put together the move, the effect it would have on your target, and was seeing thing a bit to graphically in her head I think. She did get through it, but I am guessing that the weapon side of Karate is not going to hold much interest for her. Now this is fine, just the first time I have run into this. I am interest in where it will go with her training – Not that I hold it against her, but because the part of me that finds Psychology fascinating finds this all very interesting.

I have always been around people that studied martial arts for self defense and understood what was involved, and the damage you can do to a person with this knowledge (until now I guess). I have not done martial arts as a sport or to stay fit. Both are nice side effects of my study, but my main goal is to know the art and be able to take care of myself and family when/if thing go wrong. I am going to have to re-evaluate how I deal with other students now so I can take into account that they may be only doing this for fun/exercise and don’t want to know what the move does or how to actually use it on the street. This obviously extends to even swords which I doubt any of us would/will ever use outside the dojo. My fascination with the arts, the weapons and history drives me to wanting to know how the weapon was used, did it work well and how did this effect the way people fought. I could (and may if I get off my ass) write a bunch about how weapons evolution leads to changes in how we fight wars and that changes everything about us and history. . . From the martial arts point of view I want to know why you do the move, where are you trying to hit and why? I want to understand the full 360 degree view of the move if I can.

I have learned something new, seen a new way that other look at martial arts and hopefully (I doubt) not scared off a student of my teachers. Now I need to figure out a way to teach her the form so she can enjoy it without going into what she sees as unnecessary details to learning the moves. I hope I can do this as it will make me a better teacher in this politically correct world. It will also help me to deal with and understand the view of so many in this state that can’t get their mind around the fact that physical violence exists and as a martial artist you may need to use it someday.

I guess the question I need to ponder for a while is do you need to accept the facts of physical violence and its place in the martial arts to study the martial arts. Can you be a martial artists and just see it as a sport without any of the history or understanding of what you are really doing as you do a kata? Or maybe I just need to accept that not everyone in the Dojo is a Martial Artist, some are just folks at a different kind of gym doing their part to stay in shape – nothing wrong with that, but they are not Martial Artist.

Promotion Pictures

HI

Here is a picture from promotions last week at Karate. . .


That is me with my younger daughter. She is so psyched to get that first stripe I can't begin to tell you.

Karate Update

News from the home front. . .

Been meaning to post this for a few days now but been busy. . . My younger daughter got her first stripe in Karate on Monday night. She is now a white belt with a yellow stripe!! She has only been going about six weeks and is so excited about the new rank! Been bouncing for a while now hoping to get it at the demo we did Monday. She goes to the same Uechi school as Dad (I got my next rank too, up to green with a brown stripe now) and we both had a great time at the demo.

That’s all for now.

Green Belt

Hey - The big news of this week for me was getting my next rank in my new style of Karate. . . I got my Green Belt in Shohei Ryu karate (a branch of Uechi ryu) on Monday. . . I am thrilled!! The kids were there to see it too!