Tag: shodan workout

Friday July 31st, 2020

Yesterday I took a late, long lunch for the workout in the figure eight park. The kids and I met Sensei and several of the youth who will be promoting tomorrow. We spread ourselves out on the green and wore masks.

On Sensei’s order, we ran relays, in sets of ten, to a marker in less than twelve seconds, I think. Then he lowered the time to about nine seconds. Anyone who needed more time would have to run another lap. We ran to the mark, then walked back. After each timed run, we had about thirty seconds to recuperate. During the second set, we had somewhat more time but could not stop moving until we’d reached the marker and returned to our starting position. In essence, he’d doubled the distance we had to run without doubling the time. Our starting position was in line with a tree where a lady sat with her dog.

Sensei noted that the dog looked like Benji. The kids had no idea what he was talking about, but the few grown-ups there, like me, knew exactly who he meant. Just in case you don’t:

Apparently, according to this video, it’s been remastered and you can purchase it! But for some history, Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benji

Benji is totally seventies. And I must admit that the dog next to the lady under the tree did look just like the famed Benji from the seventies.

But back to to running relays: so the longer distance required a slightly different strategy: I took maybe two more seconds to run to the original mark and then jogged back.

It was really hot in the afternoon sun, which made the whole workout all the more strenuous. He started us out, by the way, with sixty tricep push-ups, sit-ups and squats, done as quickly as we could manage. We did the exercises before running relays. Afterwards, we practiced high rank kata, then ran the basic ones, including the kicking kata. Finally, we went over shodan and nidan syllabi. He asked for requests, so we ran Kanku for Senpais N and B, our highest ranking members. Here’s a video of Kanku published by the école TajRif de Karaté kyokushin Tetouan:

It is a beautiful kata, and one I do not know. I kept my distance and stumbled along. Also, given all the kata I do need to know for Saturday in a week, I resolved not to worry about it. But once I have the shodan test behind me, I’d love to really learn this kata.

We also ran the bo staff katas without bos, so that was interesting! And challenging.

In the evening, I went back to work and worked until about 8:45pm. I really did not want to do my remaining forty exercises. I even went as far as asking my daughter F, who is actually my Senpai in karate since she started over a year earlier than me, if I could skip.

She asked if I’d had enough water, worried I might be a bit dehydrated after that workout. So she told me to drink more water and dodged the question. I persisted. She suggested tackling the easier exercises first, and leave off push-ups if I was that tired.

F was willing to let me off, but her hedging and the fact that I even felt like I needed to ask permission were all signs that I really should do the exercises. I was about nine days out from my own test. I took her suggestion, had a bit of water, and tackled squats and sit-ups first. Once those were done, I felt good, and tackled the remaining chest push-ups. Funny how much resistance the mind can put up to something that really took little time. Forty is, after all, less than half of one hundred!

This morning, I did exercises right after making a coffee. I went out and bought bottled water for tomorrow’s junior promotion, and I texted Jessica.

We have karate class tonight. The junior promotion tomorrow will be early in the morning.

Friday July 17th, 2020

Yesterday morning I did do my usual exercises, but I didn’t last night. During my lunch break, I went here:

I donated blood for the first time. This was something I have wanted to do for a long time, but I’ve been below the weight limit for most of my adult life, except when I was pregnant. At my last physical, I realized I was finally slightly over the limit and discussed it with my doctor. She said the need for blood donations now is greater than usual, due to the pandemic. So, after leaving the doctor’s office, I called the Red Cross from my car and finally made an appointment. Yesterday, I kept the appointment.

I had no idea what I was getting into, but many people do it on a regular basis and it saves lives. That’s good enough for me. Though I played the cool cucumber, the intake nurse noted my pulse was slightly elevated. I confessed I’d never donated before. She pricked my finger to check my ability to clot, and assured me, “That’s usually the most painful portion of it! You’ll do fine.”

A gentleman set me up for the actual blood draw. Their needle was no different from the kind used for blood draws for a physical. The time period was longer, and a nurse gave me a “gummy” toy car, enclosed in a glove, to squeeze. R&B played inside the Red Cross van; I watched in amusement as one nurse, the gentleman who set me up, grooved to the music.

I resisted the urge to make vampire jokes.

My husband did receive vampire jokes from me prior, and responded with fainting jokes. He donated blood before, and knows exactly what not to say. And I knew when to stop paying attention to his texts.

I think of the blood donation in the same manner as a kumite match, or karate fight. It will weaken you, but it is also a learning experience that, in the long term, it can make you stronger.

Perhaps, in the case of a blood donation, it is more about mental strength than physical, at least for me. Once the blood draw had actually finished, I was feeling good, and then I saw the bag of blood and thought, “That came from me?” I immediately felt a bit dizzy, then I thought to myself, “Well this is silly–one or two minutes ago, most of that blood had already left my body and I did not feel this way. I feel this way because I looked at that bag. That bag is a good thing–and I am just fine.” The nurse told me when to sit up and I waited to sit up until I was told, and I felt just fine.

I did have the orange juice, and an entire bottle of water. I thought about taking some of the treats, but had brought fruit and nuts in the car, for the specific reason of not needing to take any sweets.

Once the draw is done, you wait for fifteen minutes to make sure you are okay. The nurse who released me instructed me not to exercise for 24 hours, or drink alcohol. So that was it for both my evening and morning exercises, along with that evening glass of wine.

Today, however, the kids and I met Sensei in the Figure 8 Park for a work-out. He had us do two minute runs broken up with kata and exercises. We one set of 20 push-ups, sit-ups and squats. For kata, we first practiced three of the pinans. Roughly in the middle of the workout, we did the sokugis, or the first punching katas. We ended the workout with Gekisai Dai and Sho, and Sensei led. After a couple runs, we simply drank water and socialized.

During the kata drills, Sensei also had us pay attention to how much distance we need for social distancing during the pandemic: he recommends thirty feet, outdoors, when folks are exercising. He instructed S to count it out for himself, since S, who is quite tall, also has large feet.

Tonight, I am teaching and hope to run the IFK upper 17 moves after kihon. I will ask my kohai and co-teacher to run kihon. We will use this video after the break:

Monday June 15th, 2020

I have not updated this site for a few days. I did do push-ups, sit-ups and squats last Thursday and Friday. Friday evening, we had karate, as well as Saturday morning. Sensei had hoped to have a beach work-out, with appropriate social distancing, but the beaches are not yet open for group activities. He had to cancel it and hold class over Zoom.

The kids, husband and I did go to the beach Saturday afternoon. We tried Will Rogers State Park Beach, but the lot was full and we were unable to stop. We drove on to Point Dume. The kids swam. D and I were cold. A strong, chill breeze kept our ears sore. I wore a towel over my head and pinched the towel closed under my chin to protect my ears.

Once the kids finished swimming, we hiked along the trail. On the way back, we saw seals! Not many, but we could see a cluster on the rocks, close to the shore, from one of the look-out areas.

On Sunday, we had our dojo community planning meeting and managed to agree on a letter to send out. We need to run the letter by Sensei for edits.

I have been keeping the paper journal every day, though finding time to update this site is sometimes challenging. So since this should be the Monday entry, I’ll jump to Monday.

I did push-ups, sit-ups and squats this morning. Sensei posted a black belt training work-out for those of us testing on his Facebook site. He’s suggesting one hundred push-ups, sit-ups and squats. This week, I am still doing ninety. I’ll be at one hundred pretty soon. I do these exercises twice daily, on week days, and presumably, Sensei’s workout is for a day. Hopefully I’m good. This morning I could only do about seventy push-ups on my toes. That’s fifty “tricep-style” on the ground, and twenty “chest” ones on the mat, before I have to go to my knees. I know I’m allowed to do them on my knees, but it makes me feel “less than,” if I cannot do the requirement on my toes.

Senpai H, who tested last year, told me that we only have to do sixty for the black belt test if we do them on our knuckles. I do do them on my knuckles. Sensei likes to mix it up, however. The last time I discussed exercises with him, he’d suggested reaching the point where I could do sixty on my knuckles on the ground. Given we may not be able to do a ten man kumite round, however, or if I end up simply fighting my two children for ten rounds, he will have to make other parts of the Shodan test more difficult, in order to make up for the lack in that area.

He also recommended jump rope intervals for cardio this week, so I did that today instead of jogging. Also included: drilling Sanchin back to back with Tensho, so I practiced those as well. I was rusty on Tensho, but watching a video of Bobby Lowe helped bring it back.

I wrote outside this morning, and, while writing, the squirrels were all over the place. They are in the lemon tree now. I’d never seen them there before. Normally they like the loquat tree.