2005 Workouts #34 and #35: Just do it… UNTIL YOU PUKE!

I’m not going to say too much about workout #33 as it was fairly mundane compared to the onslaught of last nights workout.

We get to the dojo and do some simple warmups… right before class, disappears for a few seconds which is fairly normal, but when he returns he has a dry erase marker. On the small markerboard that is posted by the entrance he writes the words: JUST DO IT.

While we were lined up, he tells us that he has a theme for tonight’s workout and that he’s written the first half of it on the board. We’d have to wait until the end to get the rest of it. He elected McCabe-san to run warmups, which I am pretty pleased with as McCabe does a pretty good job of balancing warm-up with strengthening death.

And then the workout begins. I lost count at 120 lunge punches up and down the floor, and the same long treatment was given to front kick, downward block, rising block, knifehand block, and side thrust kick. We had a new white belt in the class that I thought would stroke out, but she actually hung with the rest of the class for much of the time. The only time I let up from the pace was to make corrections on the white belts or urge on some of the red belts as they were dragging through all of this, a fact that I am pretty proud of.

The whole concept of relaxation in between techniques became absolutely necessary during a workout like that. The second class was more of the same, only this time with 3-5 time attack and slow sparring. I felt fairly competant during the sparring, but I totally screwed up several of the kata that we did as a cool down.

Surprisingly, I got through Empi and Jion quite well however when it came time to do Kanku Dai I had a minor fumble. Bassai Dai went well enough, but the Tekki katas betrayed me in a big way, as I completely brain-farted on Sandan, and Nidan was a little fumbly. Shodan I got through without incident, but it wasn’t a great way to finish up the workout. I was dead at the end anyway, so either way it was nice to be done.

I plan on sitting on the couch tonight and doing nothing. That is all for now.

(BTW, the second half of the statement on the marker board was UNTIL ITS RIGHT.) We’ve got a long way to go.