The Tango De La Muerte…

Karate tonight was very interesting. The first class was lead in warmups by Erbe-san because it was his birthday and he didn’t want to. Oedewaldt forced him into it, since he was the ranking black belt until Sensei Brewer showed up.

Sensei Brewer called for the black belts to come and meet with him, and we were informed that we were to take a certain subset of karate techniques and teach the students in belt-ranked groups. Oedewaldt was given punching, McCabe kicking, Garls resting stance, and I was given blocking. We were informed to teach to the different belt levels by adapting our area based on their experience. We were given 5-7 minutes per group.

Things went generally well for my section, except for the fact that my second group was the brown belts… Erbe, Parrott, and Conover. I wanted them to attempt to harness body vibration instead of full-on rotation. They asked if the hips were supposed to end up in the same positions as when they were rotated, and I said yes.

This obviously was too much for them to comprehend, so I had to elaborated… I wanted them to treat each technique seperately and harness both off-center (rotated 45 degrees) then on-center (normal 90 degree) body vibration. This message was not getting through, so I told them basically to give it a shot and see what happened. At this point they were obviously thinking about it way too much and their techniques ended up poorly as a result. At this point I switched up and let them do normal rotation, and that looked a lot better.

Sensei Brewer was sitting behind me during all of this, and he chimed in affirming that the questions that the brown belts were asking me were good. I agreed, but I felt like I chubbed them pretty well. Sensei ended up joking with me about it in the hallway on the way back into class, but I really hate it when I look more like a tard than I already am in front of Sensei Brewer.

Generally we were all pleased with the workout, as we always are when we are allowed to instruct. Then something strange happened… in between classes, Sensei Brewer told us there was going to be a brown and black belt meeting before the second class started. Sensei drug a chair over into the corner of the room and sat down, and motioned for the rest of us to come sit in front of him. At this point, the loudest voice inside my head started bringing up the fact that the last time this happened was when the organization changed, so there were some nervous moments before he told us to discuss how we felt about teaching this way. We all took our turns to describe what went well, what the downsides were, and what the experience was like for the brown belts. By the time it was over, we had talked about everything for twenty minutes.

To me it seems relatively obvious that we are focus-grouping for another blockbuster Sensei Brewer thesis. I have heard rumors that the time may be drawing nigh for another step up the ladder for some of our head instructors, so this isn’t completely unexpected. I actually enjoyed discussing things like this, I hope the trend continues. Having dialogue is definitely better than the “teach then scan for hollow Sensei Look of Death” method that had been employed up to now.

The second class was pretty by the book. We did some basics up and down the floor, followed by everyones kata, and finally rounded it out with some sparring drills. I got across from McCabe-san and was pleasantly surprised that his control has gotten much better. We had an enjoyable set of jyu-ippon kumite, and no death was had by either. He split the skin on his knuckle open somehow and bled on my gi… it’s going to be that way for a few days because I won’t have time to get it washed until this weekend.

Ah well, badges of courage they are, yes.