Posts Tagged ‘Karate’

I have officially taken over the care and maintenance of the Shorin Ryu of Columbia website. It’s not such a bad deal really. Sensei is allowing me to deduct all money I spend on the website from my monthly dues; and it’s cool to be able to update stuff instead of hoping someone who doesn’t know anything about websites will update it someday.

Anyways, the website (www.columbiashorinryu.com) hasn’t been updated, until tonight, for the past 2 years. My most immediate concern is to put up current data, and fix some minor layout issues that make me wanna scream. After that, I might try doing some more dynamic stuff to make it a little more modern looking. When I first looked at the site, I hated it. It’s started to grow on me, though. Some of the colors don’t work so well, but the overall color scheme sorta goes with the matsubayashiryu logo; so I might try to stick with that color scheme for a while.

Last weeks classes were good. Nothing unusual, but good. Unfortunately, I had a bad week of not being able to do anything right. It was very frustrating, but it passed. Tonight’s class was pretty good. We Practiced rolling and break-falling. It was fun, and something different. I don’t think I need to go to a chiropractor, though, as my back must’a popped a dozen times while doing the rolls.

Thursday nights class was another night of “god I suck at karate.” I couldn’t do anything right again. Even Sensei Walker noted that I had pretty crappy front kicks. The class consisted of mostly one-time sparring type drills and punching drills on kicking shields. Nothing new, but I felt like a moron. Hopefully more training will remedy this.

Had a decent class last night. Lots of basics and kata. It was held basic because there’s been about 5 new student in class lately (the most I’ve ever seen). It’s ok though, cause I need some basic instruction. It was also an interesting night because we had a celebrity guest appearance by one Carl Edwards of Nascar fame. He’s from the town I live in (Hallsville), and I guess he works out at Gold’s Gym every morning where Sensei Walker works out. Apparently they got to talking (Sensei Walker having no idea who he was), and Carl said that he’d always wanted to learn karate. So Sensei invited him to class. He quite a nice guy. I was surprised though, as he seemed much smaller than he appeared on the cover of Men’s Health a couple months ago. Anyway, he seemed to have a good time and said he plans on coming back. I hope so.

Chalk another one up to my list of celebrities met:

Gregory Hines
Mark Walhberg (said “Hi” to him)
Penny Marshall (saw her from about 50ft) from the Movie Renaissance Man

There’s a whole host of other quasi-celebrities that include professional pool players, the father of the CEO of Wizards of the Coast, a bunch of now-famous Army generals, etc.

Last week was a mixed week of karate. Monday sucked severely. It was one of those classes where I couldn’t do anything right; basic movements, advanced movements, kata, sparring movements. You name it, I fracked it up. For some reason, I was having a really hard night seperating from my shotokan roots. Every single thing I did was confused by or ended up as shotokan. It was terrible. I hope I don’t have another night like that soon.

Thursday’s class was a bit better, but not much. Sensei had me assist him during the kids class. At one point, he asked me to demonstrate the kicking drill. It’s the only kicking drill they do, and it consists of front kick, round kick, side kick, spinning back kick. Not too hard, but I hadn’t warmed up or stretched at all. My angry hips let me know they were pissed on the sidekick, and I ended up looking like a fool. Oh well. That’s nothing new for me. During the adult class, Sensei actually had me take the white belts through their kata for about 15 minutes. That surprised me greatly considering I’ve only been training in the style for 5months or so. I guess it shows he has confidence in me, and I guess that’s a good thing. *shrug*

Last nights class was small… very small. Exactly 3 of us students and 2 instructors. It was a pretty good workout. All kata: 3 Fukyu, 5 Pinan, 3 naihanchi, 1 wankan, and about 10 rohai. Add the Bassaidai, Bassaisho, Empi, Jion, Gankaku, and Nijushiho I did before class, and I was pretty tired.

I’ve misse the last two weeks of karate because of a combination of stomach bug and injured back. I’m considering going to St. Louis tomorrow for the tri-annual ASKA instructor training, but I was worried about my back holding out. So tonight I went out in the front yard(Ok, it was the front yard, but that didn’t sound as cool) and did some kata. I did taikyoku shodan (I don’t know why I do this kata. I find it rediculously trivial; but that’s another story), the 5 heian, the 3 tekki, bassaidai, and kankudai. It’s amazing how missing only 2 weeks of karate can really kick your arse. It took me about 30 minutes to do all the kata, and I was drenched with sweat. It’s about 90degrees outside and 100% humidity.. that probably had something to do with it. Anyways, my back feels pretty good. I hope I can hold out tomorrow.

Last Tuesday night’s karate class involved lots of kata. Much sweat was released into the environment. I learned a lot of finer points on the kata, which is good. Mr. Koener said that he was gonna start treating me like a brown belt and making picky corrections on me. It’s about time! ;p After class, he said he hoped I didn’t mind him making corrections on me. I told him that I wish he’d make more, and it’s hard to learn the kata correctly if you don’t have anyone telling you what you’re doing wrong. He said that a lot of times, people get really offended and ticked off when they get corrected. I just laughed and said that only the people who don’t really wanna learn anything.

Saturday the 6/24 I made an unexpected appearance at the Mapleton dojo. Ann and I had went back up to Illinois to attend our good friend Aaron’s going away party; as he is moving to San Antonio, Texas very soon. I took the opportunity to get a workout in, and ended up doing a pretty decent amount of Gankaku kata with my friend Darren. He’s trying to learn the kata, and it’s one of the 2/26 kata that I was, for some reason, never able to learn well enough to remember(the other being Jiin if you’re interested). Unfortunately, the class was rather sparse with only , , Bob, Darren, and me; and everyone had to leave early that day.

As for Aaron’s party, it was a lot of fun. There was a lot of alcohol, and they had the karaoke running till late into the night.

I got to class tonight about 2.5 hours early as I car-pooled to work with another guy and he had to leave work early. So, I took advantage of it and did lots of kata before the kids class started. I knocked out about 25 or 30 kata in an hour. That’s not a horrible lot, but I was pretty well tired by the time I finished it.

Tonights class was just plain fun. We did “bunkai kata.” Basically it’s a drill we’ve done a couple times in shotokan classes, but not often. You do the kata responding to people actually attacking you. We were doing it with about 5 people surrounding us and were darn near combat speed. It was quite fun. I got busted in the mouth/eye a couple times, and I did the same to others. I also did my patented BBQG Big Toe stomp on a couple people.