Tag: balance

Better Kicks: Strength and Balance

Guest instructor SenseI AJ taught Saturday morning’s class with a focus on building balance, strength and mental resilience.

Saturday, our guest Sensei AJ returned with more challenging exercises, this time focusing on the legs. She started out by having us do warm-ups focused on helping us loosen up: circling the hips, knees, head, swinging our arms, etc.

Following the warm-up, we started with swinging-turns, where we allow our arms to dangle and move as we turn. The focus is on keeping the upper body loose and coordinated with what the lower body is doing. Next, we did “step-ups,” where we practiced stepping up on our toes as we raised one knee, with the focus on attaining more height.

Leg Exercises: Balance and Strength

Astoria-Megler Bridge June 2018: balance and strength are necessary for both bridges and karateka!

Finally, she brought us to the challenging exercise. Each of us fetched a chair or positioned ourselves against a wall, if we could. She demonstrated on a chair. My son and I also brought kitchen chairs into the living room. Lately, we’ve been opting to setup for Zoom karate indoors, in our living room. Using the back of a chair for support in front of you, you bend forward and kick. The goal is to make your shoulder, hip, leg and foot go out in a straight line. Also, you hold out the oi-zuki arm straight, too, with your hand in a fist. So your fist and arm are parallel to your leg. To practice proper chambering, you first bring your leg up with your knee bent, then extend the leg.

Sounds simple enough, but then Sensei AJ made the exercise more challenging: you keep your leg up, to practice balance, and retract the leg back to the chamber position. You do all this while balancing on one foot with your fist still out. In this position, you kick and return to the chamber position ten times without dropping that leg. Then we switched sides and did that set of exercises on the other leg.

Once we finished the exercises, I could really feel it in my hips and lower back muscles. My son felt it, too.

Spin Kick Goal, Belt-Stretches for Wind-down

Finally, our instructor went over a spinning kick that all of these exercises were building towards. Many of us practicing over Zoom did not have sufficient space for this, though my son and I attempted it in our living room. Sensei T and his family, who have a rather large dance studio for practicing, could perform the spinning kick. It was cool to see him demonstrate what we are building towards.

At the end of class, she had us stretch with belts. We looped our belts around our extended legs and feet to add some extra pressure to deepen the stretch. You put your belt round the center of your foot, extend your leg, then use the weight of your arms to pull the foot towards you. In this position, we stretch the legs, one at a time, from an upright position, then lay on our sides, leg out in front, still holding the belts, and twist our bodies to the opposite side to stretch out our lower backs and hips.

Hanging Between Disasters: a Buddhist Tale

Chinese New Year Parade 2017 in Los Angeles

I’ll end where Sensei AJ began: she opened class with a thoughtful re-telling of an old Buddhist story. A fierce tiger chases a monk through the forest, and the monk, trying to save his life, climbs into a deep well.

Too late, he sees a poisonous snake at the bottom of the well. Luckily, he grabs a hold of a protruding root, extending from the well wall, on the way down. The tiger prowls at the top of the well, ready to eat him. The poisonous snake, swimming in the water below, is ready to bite him.

Trapped, the monk hangs on for dear life between these two types of death. Then he realizes that mice are chewing through the root, so very soon, he could fall to his death in the waters below. Things look grim to the monk, but he is patient.

Sweetness and Change

Above the well, a tree towers, sheltering a bee hive directly above the well. Honey, dripping from the beehive, lands on the monk’s face. He licks the sweet honey, grateful to be alive and experience the wonderful taste of that honey. Buddhism, after all, has taught him to appreciate life’s sweetness.

An eel: not exactly a poisonous snake at the bottom of a well, but also dangerous

Also, Buddhism teaches that everything changes. Though his situation feels hopeless, he waits. The impatient tiger jumps into the well, falls past the monk and lands on the poisonous snake below. The monk manages to shimmy back up the well and climbs out. Sensei AJ then reminded us that, though this pandemic has lasted a long time, our situations will change.

Sensei AJ’s point? We can enjoy the sweetness of a karate class together over Zoom while we wait for that change.

Balance, Karate and Truth

Balancing On One Foot

On Saturday, Senpai DT led class. Though it was a small class due to the holiday weekend, it was challenging. She focused on both stretching and balance.

For balance, she had us do a series of kicks on first the right, then the left. During the kicks, you are not to put your kicking foot down but go straight from one to the next. Also, we completed each kick, so you could tell one kick from another. We also focused on foot position.

For example, for the first exercise, we did a kin geri (low groin kick, with toes pointed), followed by a mae geri (front kick using the ball of the foot), yoko geri (side kick using the “knife-edge,” or side of the foot with the big toe pulled back), followed by an ushiro geri (back kick, using the heel.) She also had participants name kicks, then had us do a new series of kicks, on both sides, based on the order that we named. Over Zoom, she spotlighted each student and gave each person a chance to demonstrate their mastery of the techniques.

Balance in a Narrow Space

I found that exercise particularly challenging–definitely good for balance, strength and precision. It did not help that I was trying to perform the kicks in a narrow area of our dining room, sandwiched in between the dining table and a shelving unit full of kitchen equipment!

Normally we do karate outdoors. Over the Thanksgiving holiday, it was cooler than usual. We also had a packed schedule. Short on time, I started the Zoom class on a computer normally used for monitoring. That computer has a larger screen, but the space where it is located is not ideal for a workout. That day, I had a number of activities and errands planned. I was just happy to be able to squeeze a few minutes out of my day for karate.

Balancing Health Against Other Obligations

Readers may have noticed I missed a weekend updating this blog. If you are a weekly visitor, I apologize. Last week, I experienced the return of an old nemesis: tendonitis. As a digital artist, I spend considerable time on the computer, even when I am not housebound and forced to do everything over Zoom. My work-life is spent in front of a monitor, using a mouse to perform fine-motor motions. When we’re refining moving geometry for a shot in a television show or film, we will often need to select and change the positions of small components, or vertices. Using these, artists refine the shapes seen on screen over time. Unfortunately, doing this work without taking appropriate breaks, for too long, can lead to tendonitis.

Three weeks ago, I started a new job. The company, itself, requires employees to take appropriate breaks and even puts those breaks into the company calendar. During the lunch hour, for example, you are not to contact a fellow employee through chat, email or phone calls. (Since we all work from home right now, walking over to someone else in the kitchen, at a desk or in a common area is not an option.) The company wants to avoid burn-out and injury, and has implemented appropriate measures for this.

Consequences for Lacking Balance

At my last job, I’d slowly transitioned from doing less artist work to more coding. At this new job, I was getting to do shots–so back to primarily artist work. However, I feared I was rusty at the work and too slow. So, I ignored required breaks. Anxious to get the work done both well and quickly, I worked through lunch. I took fewer breaks. Since I’m working from home, on the honor system, there was no one to chastise me or remind me to take those needed breaks. No one, but me, knew I was not taking those breaks. The result? Within a week, my tendonitis was back.

I paid a price for letting fear and insecurity get the best of me: pain. The tendons at the base of my right hand, close to my wrist, swelled visibly. They are larger than those of my left. I sometimes experienced twinges while getting dressed, or doing the dishes. During the week of Thanksgiving, I switched to doing anything I could with my left hand. I even did my ten minute writes using my left hand. For mousing on the computer, I used my left hand.

Years ago, when I had a lot of issues with tendonitis, I habitually switched between my left and right hands, so this is not the feat that it sounds. I even spent time trying to figure out the optimal time to spend using a particular hand, and landed on a week. Once the swelling in my right hand disappears, I will return to this.

Karate Emphasizes Balance

Photo taken on camper trip, July 2019

In karate, we normally do exercises on both sides. We want to improve strength on our weak side, and flexibility on both sides. Alternating the left and right sides is simply part of kihon. Many katas also require the karateka to perform a series of motions on both sides. During ren raku or syllabus, we also coordinate punches on the same side as a kick or the “leading” leg (the leg forward), but will also practice coordinating punches on the opposite side of a kick or leading leg. Balance in strength and dexterity is built into the study of karate.

House of the Search For Ultimate Reality:
A Kyokushin Dojo

I feel a bit ashamed that I needed to re-learn the lesson of balance through the pain of an avoidable injury. As an imperfect human, however, with plenty of room for enlightenment, I also need patience with myself. When fear comes, I need to ground those fears in reality.

One defines Kyokushin as “ultimate truth.” In our dojo under Sensei R., we prefer the more Buddhist-based translation of “ultimate reality.” The idea is simply that we want to understand reality, or truth as reality. We assume that reality, because of the tricks of an individual’s mind, or habits or culture (including unconscious bias), is not obvious. Seeing what is real takes time, thought and effort.

Putting Karate’s Teachings to Work

How does this apply to me and my work situation? Well, obviously by having prescribed breaks, along with frank discussions about burn-out at work, the particular group of people I work with now are concerned about balance. On the day before Thanksgiving, our supervisor asked at a meeting, “How are you feeling? Who is burned out? Please be honest with me. I care about each of you.” Each of us answered that question. I punted, pointing out I was still in the “honeymoon phase” and hadn’t been with the company long enough to feel burned out. This was true, but of course I didn’t mention the tendonitis. Of course, this company wants employees to work hard and be focused. However, they do not want to over-work anyone and certainly do not want anyone injured or burned out. That is clear to me now.

I was not seeing that reality. Instead, I saw my past: I remembered people who, over the years, had said I needed to “pay my dues,” or who’d told me I had no business trying to work in visual effects while raising children. The schedules simply didn’t permit you to be a good parent, according to one friend. So, instead of hearing what was actually said, I heard ghosts, along with my own fears.