Last night’s workout was decent, despite Master O leading us through the same humdrum class with the same humdrum speeches. I once again correctly anticipated his “Well, both Sensei Brewer and Sensei Hartman aren’t here tonight, so you’re left to our tender mercies” speech that he recites verbatim every time he gets to instruct.
He always has the black belts stand out to correct, so correct we did. I went relatively easy on the white and yellow belts, but the red belts were getting very little mercy. At first, I just tried to be firm and make corrections kindly, but as the night progressed I got increasingly firm to the point where I elected to show Colin-san and Jeremy-san why their stance was incorrect. I grabbed both of them and took them over into a far corner, and explained to them I was going to help them fix their stance. So I sat down and held their knees in a proper front stance for several minutes. Lo and behold, for the rest of the night their stances were much less of a problem.
Tasha decided (with much urging) to come back last night and she did a fantastic job. She told me after class that internally her stance doesn’t feel good and it would take some time for it to feel right again. That’s fine with me, on because right now there wasn’t very much apparently incorrect about it.
My Dad showed up to pay his dues and watch the class tonight to see what it had become. He had a few comments about the lack of stance in the higher ranks, but he seemed to really be enjoying himself. He’s coming back on Tuesday, which will be GREAT. 🙂
The second class we broke up into kata groups, and I elected to take Tekki Shodan. It’d been awhile since I had done that kata, and I realized after consulting with some of the other black belts that I was incorrectly remembering the first of the three moves right before the returning wave kicks. It was pretty embarassing to make a mistake like that, but it just reinforced to me the importance of doing these katas regularly. Also, it showed me that even something as seemingly mundane as teaching kata can push us as black belts to do things right, better, and more.
After class we evaporated an hour and a half at Hardee’s visiting with
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