Today’s workout was test prep at its best. We did not one, but TWO sets of the Shodan test basics. I’m not going to lie… it was not fun. My body has largely stopped hurting, however now its purely a fatigue issue… I get about halfway through the Shodan test basics and my legs and core just don’t hack it anymore. The way that we’ve been approaching the test basics has been very endurance focused, and that is where I need some work.
Either way, today was a tough one… we alternated sparring and kata for awhile. I felt good sparring… my stance felt a little out of control, but my ability to commit my techniques and defend myself while doing so is coming along. I’m really enjoying all the core exercises we are doing right now, I don’t seem to care so much when I get hit in the stomach when I’m coming in. Soaking up damage this way let me put pressure on my opponent and use my speed to get several attacks in after I get inside their distance. And I like it. 🙂
My kata felt crappy today. I felt that my timing and connection was all off, despite the fact that I ended on imbusen for both attempts at Jitte. Hangestu felt better than it has in awhile (probably due to all the core workout we’ve been doing lately), but my Sochin has been neglected of late and I aim to fix that.
After the sparring/kata combination, we did our standard regiment of core and abdominal exercises. They were really hard, as we were told to do hovers for 5 minutes. We were allowed to change positions however we want, but that’s a damned lot of hovers. New additions to the regiment today were tricep dips, which I always enjoy doing. After all the strengthening, we did some stretching exercises which really felt great…
I decided to start up the post-workout protein shakes again. I want to see if I can convert all this strengthening into a little extra muscle mass. We’ll see how that goes. Good, hard workouts like this are what we need to get to the next level.
Related Articles
1 user responded in this post