Last night, over Zoom for karate class, N. was the instructor, but she traded off with DJ. DJ is an adult yellow stripe; she is having surgery next week, so Sensei gave her an opportunity to promote prior to her surgery. She demonstrated her knowledge of kihon, along with N. After kihon, she did the kata walk required for her rank, exercises and syllabus. She had fourth kyu, the one that features shutos, which, in my opinion, is one of the more difficult ones to learn. It simply has more moves. DJ did really well, though she struggled with Tsuki No kata. That one is a bear under normal circumstances, and she had to learn it in a hurry over Zoom. She passed her promotion, however. She is our first adult to promote over Zoom!
This morning, Senpai B, who is our youngest black belt–she earned her adult black belt at age fourteen–led the class. She called on me to teach kihon. I asked if she’d like me to alternate with F and S, since they were present for class. Senpai B approved, so we lead the entire kihon, alternating between us. F and I threw in some instruction where we thought appropriate. I did some instruction for performing ushiro geri that Sensei had given to DJ last night: he instructed us to chamber first, look behind you, perform the kick, draw your leg back quickly to your chamber, then set the foot down. I repeated the instructions, but had trouble keeping my balance! Nevertheless, I slowed the count and instructed folks to follow those steps, and struggled through myself. Senpai M, our Nidan who moved east, had given us similar instructions a while ago.
After kihon, B took back over and taught Pinan Sono San.
When class was finished, F went back inside to work on her English literature class and S stayed outside with me to practice Bo Sono Ichi. Neither S nor I could remember it, so we did a quick run-through of Pinan Sono Ichi Ura. We did well with that, except that we forgot to do blocks instead of punches during part of it.
We googled Bo Sono Ichi and found this very accomplished video of a black belt demonstrating it. Not only did this gentleman do an awesome Bo Sono Ichi, but he had up videos for Ni and San:
From what S and I can tell, this video and the other bo staff kata videos were first posted about nine years ago by members of the South Delta Kyokushin IKO Club. They appear to be re-posted about 2 years ago. In any case, this karateka is awesome and you should check out his other two videos.
S and I watched the other bo staff kata, then returned to this one and watched it at a quarter speed to learn the hand switches. When Sensei had taught this, and to be fair, he’d taught us bo staff katas more than once, he’d had us drill the hand switches. It was fun to do, but it has been several months since we practiced it. However, I need it now for the Shodan test. S caught on very quickly, then critiqued me while I practiced. Finally, once I had it down, he left to play Mindcraft with a friend, and I drilled it until I felt more comfortable with it.
To mix things up a bit, I practiced Pinan Sono Ichi and Ni Uras, then went back to the bo staff to practice some more.
