2007 Workout #35-37: Testing, and focus on basics…

This week was a pretty solid week for karate. Things kicked off on Tuesday night with a belt exam that saw some very good efforts, with a very good showing by everyone’s favorite . Congrats to her, and to everyone else that trained hard and survived the exam!

The rest of the week was a deep examination of basic technique. We spent most of both the Thursday and Saturday workouts working on stance and lunge punch. Working specifically on hip action and connection through the center really helped to improve the way my punches feel. Also, I found that I’ve been lax on pushing against the floor with my back leg and heel. One workout of doing that correctly had my calves feeling sore, which indicates that I’m not doing this enough in my normal workout regiment.

We rounded out the Thursday workout with these same concepts applied to basic three time attack. Dad and I took this to a different place on Saturday and attempted to use the same feeling in three to five time attack with some limited success.

This week also saw the return of one of our long-lost black belts, Lawrence-san. So far he’s survived his first few workouts back after over ten years off and its good to see him come back!