2006 Workout #110: Kumite à trios…

Before class, I knocked out 10 Sochin to round myself out to 1700. Since I made it to a rounder number, I elected to give myself a bit of a break from the deluge of Sochin that I’ve been doing lately. My break consisted of some Gojushiho Dai with .

Sensei had not arrived in time for the first class to start, so we got warmed up and partially into a test oriented class for the different belt ranked groups. and I got the brown belts, and we basically just ran them through their test basics while giving them a buffet of fine points to work on. If one or two stick it’ll be a victory, as it always is.

The second class was more timing and distance drills with partners. Since there was an odd man out, I was in a group of three with and Erbe-san. We did the various drills that Sensei led us through, working on block-counter timing, body distance, and the like.

I was reminded of an important lesson of the ages tonight, when during a drill I ended up a little too close to Erbe-san (he contended that he might have raised his leg up a little to step), but I kicked him SQUARE in the knee as I was starting my front kick attack. It was so solid when I connected that I was certain that I hurt his knee. Then I realized that my foot was numb, and felt like it had the radiating out of it stars coming from it that you see in cartoons. Interestingly, it did not really hurt though. I took a few minutes to walk it off and let Mike attack for awhile (remember, we were in a group of three), but it quickly became apparent that I did not injure myself severely because I curled my toes back and contacted with the ball of my foot.

The takeaway lesson I was reminded of was to raise your knee more, however I had to feel a little good that my toes aren’t shattered into a million pieces. Later, after the class I asked Dave how his knee was and he said, “Oh, it’s fine. When you kicked me it felt really solid, however it felt like it hurt you.” It did, but just a little. I may have a bruised ball of the foot for a few days, but it sure beats two broken toes.

As for the drills, I got a lot of mileage out of varying the timing of my punches. I found that my jab/reverse punch combination is faster than I remembered it, however I have a lot of work to do when body shifting. I want to stutter-step a lot, and this causes problems when dealing with bigger, stronger opponents like Mike and Dave. We had many good exchanges tongiht and I think everyone had fun, so it counts as a great night of karate stuff!!

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Sochin Counter
Accomplished / Goal == Percent Complete
1700 / 2000 == 85.00%
Average Kata per Workout: 16.50
Estimated Workouts Remaining: 19
Workouts that gained more than 1%: 36
Workouts that gained more then 5%: 2
Round Kick Challenge: 15 / 1000 == 1.50%