Archive for December, 2006

Monday’s (12/18/06) class was pretty decent. Nathaniel taught the class. We did a pretty good kata workout followed by self-defense oriented one-time attack type drills. He’s getting better at teaching. He’s still got a few issues, but he’s really improved over the last couple of teaching classes.

Thursday’s (12/21/06) class wasn’t. It was pretty much just a pizza party. Sensei had some pizza’s delivered and brought in a tape of the Discover Channel’s “Fight Science” special. It was a pretty good evening.

Last Saturday (12/23/06) I managed to squeeze in a Saturday morning workout with my old club. I just did kata the whole time. I stayed light, but tried to not stand around and talk (as I am known to do when with my old dojo mates). Surpisingly enough, vanirtjones showed up and wanted to go through the Matsubayashiryu kata with me, so I covered 17 of the 19 kata that I’ve managed to learn over the last year. It was good for me because it forced me to explain the movements to him; which made me realize what movement I don’t really understand yet. Funny how teaching does that to you.

Last nights class was a belt rank exam. I wasn’t supposed to sit on the board this time, in fact, I was hoping I’d get to “play” with the test candidates >) . Sensei had invited Mr. Brian Strictmeyer (sp), another local Matsubayshi ryu black belt (and, incidently, one of the baddest mofo’s I’ve ever met) to sit on the board with him and Mr. Kuehner. Unfortunately, Mr. Kuehner was inflicted with the illness that’s going around, so I was a last minute addition to the board.

The kids test went really well. The test started out with Eddy leading the kids through a pretty darn tough warmup session. The kids were pretty well tired before they even got started. There were only 2 students that I thought were even questionable, but neither Sensei, nor Brian agreed with me… which I found surprising, because Brian is VERY hard-core. In fact, Brian was extremely impressed with the kids. That’s a good sign. Brian is very old-school. He’s the way I was when I was much younger… except he actually has knowledge and skill… but he believes in “The Forge” method of training (those of you who were training in the 80′s and earlier should know what I mean.

The adult test was a whole different story. Tania was testing for 3rd Kyu, and Brendon was testing for his yellow belt (which I think is 8th kyu here). Brian had Nathanial lead the adults through a barn-burner of a warm-up. I’m not even kidding. I wanted to pass out from exhaustion just wathing them. It was only about 15 minutes long, but it scared the bejeebus out of me; because, my black belt test will consist of at least, AT LEAST, 45 minutes of that type of insanity.

After warmups, the test began. I’m not even gonna lie. It was rough. Probably close to 2 hours (I lost track of time). Unfortunately for Brendon, he got the privelage of being Tania’s partner for most of the test. Even though he’s only been training for about 8 weeks, he went through most of the brown belt test right along side Tania. He did very well. He never quit and gave it his all. I have no doubt that he’s gonna pass his test. Tania did pretty well herself, but she is definately in need of work in several areas. She hung in for a test that I’m not sure I coulda survived, and gave it her best. Whether she passes or not, I’d say is up in the air. She did good though. She should be proud of herself.

Just in case some of you are wondering, the students don’t find out for several weeks whether they passed or not. After the test, the examiners spend time in private consulting with each other and then Sensei makes his decision. Base on our pow-wow, I have a pretty darn good idea of how well everyone did, but I’m not at liberty to say; just in case they might stumble on this post.

After last night’s test, though, I am much more concerned that I was; and more determined. I have got to lose about 60 lbs, and work my a$$ off over the next several months to get in shape for the test. The estimation is that my test will be somewhere around 6 hours long; most of it simply a gruelling torture session. They are thinking maybe in August, in a building with no a/c, and they are hoping the temperature is close to 100 just to make it tougher. And, I already know the caliber of the folks I’ll be facing. There’s about a 90% chance that Brian will be one of those people. As I said, I’m terrified. Its not because of the beating I’ll take, or the torture I’ll endure. Its because I’m afraid I’ll look like and idiot and embarrass myself and Sensei Walker (as well as Sensei Brewer, Hartman, and Evans). That would be the worst thing that could happen to me. Oh well. I’ve got some training to do.

I really need to start posting closer to the actual class. I can barely remember last Thursday’s (12.07.2006) class. In fact, I cannot honestly even remember if I went. It seems like I did, because I remember watching ER late that night, and I only usually do that after class. I’m sure part of the amnesia is due to the fact that I was pretty sick last week. I called in sick to work on Friday, and didn’t get out of bed until 5:30 pm. I spent most of Saturday sleeping as well. Anyway, I’m sure it was a good class.

Monday night was Ms. Shindo’s night to teach. She started out with about 40 minutes of talking about different historical and phylisophical points of karate. Then, she proceeded to kick our collective a$$’s for the remaining hour. It was actually a very good pre-test workout… wait… that’s it… that was last Thursday’s class too. I remember now. Mr. Keuhner went through a pre-test workout… anyways, back to the subject… Tania did quite a good job on that class (even if I don’t care much for the sitting and talking part).

Kids of today insulting my childhood memories.

http://www.1up.com/do/feature?pager.offset=0&cId=3137498

C-Jump

Monday night was my turn to teach again. It was probably a good thing. My back was seriously hurting from shovelling snow over the weekend. I usually try to have some sort of class already worked out before I get there, but I just couldn’t decide what to do for class. The result was a totally *winged* class. I picked a simple theme and stuck with it.

I started the class doing a kata-like exercise called oyo-tanren(?). We did that twice, then moved on to sparring combinations to warm everyone up. Started simply with jab; forwards and backwards. I had them do jabs shuffling with the front let first then jabbing, then I switched to jab first then shuffle. I did both ways forwards and backwards making sure to explain how both methods could be effective and when one would be, imo, more effective. I continued doing this with jab reverse-punch, jab reverse-punch front-kick, and jab reverse-punch round-kick.

After that, I moved on into a 3-5 time attack styled drill; making sure they did the drill using the full length of the floor rather than just 3-5 techniques. I had them do the drill using the different combinations we had just finished doing. Towards the end, I threw in the idea of the receiver finding that opening and trying to hit it. After all that, I did a quick intro to foot-sweep using the jab reverse-punch foot-sweep combo. They all like it, I think, but they were more than a bit frustrated by it; which was the goal.

After that drill, I had them move into slow-sparring. Slow-sparring is something that most of them have never done before; unless it’s been with me. They are used to putting on full gear and sparring 2 people at a time, one-on-one while the rest of the class watches. I explained to them that that kind of sparring (fully padded down), the way it is normally conducted, is meant to test their skills. The point of this section of my class was, instead, to hone their skills. I had to observe them rather carefully (luckily, Sensei was there by this time to help me watch them); as they were having trouble with the concept of slow and controlled; which was expected.

It should probably be noted that all the partner work done above was completed in intervals that I tried to keep between 2-5 minutes in length; rotating after every interval. This kept them moving constantly the whole night, and they were constantly having to deal with someone new. I never gave them the chance to “get used to” anyone. I did make sure to keep the white belts in the same line so that they were always across from a higher belt. This served as both a coaching environment, as well as an intimidating one. It also forced the higher ranks to be wary of and practice their control.

The last five minutes of class, I ran them through kata at a very, VERY, relaxed and slow pace. After all that, I actually had to keep telling them to slow down and relax. By the end, everyone was soaked with sweat and panting. Overall, I think it was a good class.

A while back, I reviewed IE7 rather critically. After using it some more, I’d say that I still stand by that conclusion. However, I will say that IE7 has one thing really going for it: the Clear Type font thing. It’s really amazing to me how much nicer to look at and easier to read websites are using IE7 vs. Firefox 2. It’s purely a textual advantage. If I’m going to actually sit and read a website, I’ve found myself gravitating towards using IE7 over FF2. But, for normal web surfing, I still prefer FF2. I find it much easier to use, but I can’t hardly stand to read web pages in it anymore.