My life has been non-stop karate for roughly four days, but as an ichi kyu just days out from my test, that’s appropriate. At least, that’s what I tell myself.
I did exercises this morning. In order to keep track of sit-ups, since I messed up the count yesterday morning, I held 5 little stones in each hand and dropped one after each set of ten. At first, the actual dropping of stones probably gave me too much of a rest as I figured out the logistics, but it did help me keep the count.
During class, I did forty push-ups, sit-ups and squats, so I only had to do sixty afterwards. At ten o’clock at night, I did my last sets of sixty.
During my lunch break, I practiced my bo staff kata and my two ura katas, along with Saifa. F has an exam tomorrow, and her second summer school class has started, so she didn’t practice with me. Yesterday, however, she was a trooper.
Tonight, Senpai TJ taught with DJ as our monitor. My son S and I setup the older laptop outside on a table in the back yard. We also have a flood light set up to turn on, once it gets dark. We have a flood light because, long ago, my my husband bought it to use as a night time light for a short film he worked on years ago.
During class, Senpai covered Gekisai Dai. Initially, S and I seemed to be on different sides from each other the whole time, but we figured it out by the time Senpai called on us to demonstrate. Once we were spotlighted on Zoom, we got it together.
Here’s an awesome video posted by karate35, that I often use as reference for that kata:
We also had a guest instructor join us, but for observation. He is the father of one of F’s buddies from choir. Several months back, Sensei invited him to teach a self-defense class, and it was cool to learn techniques from a different style.
I called him last night. He wanted to check out our Zoom classes. He had no idea about teaching over Zoom, however, so I suggested he observe a class.
Initially he had trouble because he was not terribly familiar with Zoom. DJ let him into the class, but we weren’t sure at first who he was. His video and sound were off and he showed up under a strange name. He couldn’t chat us or figure out how to unmute to speak to us. DJ, cautious, sent him to the waiting room. I texted him on my cell. He confirmed that he was, in fact, our mystery guest, so we let him back in. By the end of the class, he figured out how to turn on his video and unmute his microphone. After class, he talked with a few of us, and confided that this was his first Zoom session ever!
After speaking with our guest instructor, Senpais SF and T graciously offered to go over promotion requirements with S and myself. We drilled shodan syllabus as well as first kyu. I accidentally kicked S during the spin kicks at the end. Later, S somehow got me on the head while practicing one of the kata. At some point, we stayed far enough away from each other to have enough space to work, and far enough back from the computer that we could still be seen on camera.
Afterwards, we practiced several kata. I’m embarrassed to admit I could not remember Pinan Sono San during lunch. I had to look it up, so I asked Senpais to review that one.
Senpai TF has recently injured her rotator cuff, so we talked abut that for a bit. Sensei had warned me not to go too low for push-ups, and to keep my elbows in, in order to hit the triceps. During one of our recent training sessions with him, he had each of us (F, S and me) demonstrate how low we go, to make sure we were not going low enough to irritate the shoulder joints.
I shared that information with TF. I suspect her push-ups are too deep. Initially, when you stop going low, it feels like cheating. However, if you keep your elbows tucked in and you stop just before your elbows line up with the bottom of your rib cage, you can work those triceps well without injuring your shoulders. That, at least, is the idea.
Soon, the kids and I will veg out and watch an episode of Star Trek: the Next Generation. It’s not as funny as Buffy, but still entertaining.
