Archive for November, 2009

Last night's class was short, but packed. We covered almost all the the black belt kata twice in about 25 minutes. Not an incredible class, but had a good sweat going.

Decent karate workout tonight. Was rather short, and I just did kata; but I feel moderately tired. On a related note, tonight saw the triumphant return of one Gamal Castile to the dojo. I actually got him to show up. It's been almost 6 years since he donned the gi. He was a bit rusty, but he's still got it in him. Great to have him back.

Tonight marked my triumphant return to the dojo after the birth of my second baby. Before class and during the kids classes, I took the opportunity for some much-needed kata training. I focused on Shotokanryu kata tonight covering the 5 Heian, Bassai Dai, Kanku Dai, Jion, Empi, and Wankan. That had me pretty sweaty, so I snagged one of the other black belts (Craig) and did some slow sparring. Even though I was very rusty, it felt good for the most part.

The adult class was very small tonight; just 4 black belts. I was the senior rank, so I decided we'd work on basic sparring. We covered rather rapidly over the course of 30 minutes 5 step, 3 step, and 1 step sparring. There wasn't much talking, and quite a bit of sweating. I focused on covering the progression from 5 to 3 to 1 step sparring and on to 3-5 time attack and slow sparring. I also quickly covered the progressive training of these exercises from beginner to shodan, as well as, how to cover the same progression during a single advanced adult class. The others seem to really enjoy the training, and the prospective instructors thanked me for the ideas and insight.

Overall, I think it was a good night.