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.