2007 Workout #51: Jion, I hardly knew ye…

With Sensei Brewer and away, it was Sensei Quinn on deck to teach. The first class was a solid basics workout where we pretty much stayed in place all night long, doing stationary techniques. It was mostly lunge punches and front kicks, and as we stayed there stationary I felt like my hip action was good, my rear leg strong with rear foot pointed forward… in short it felt briefly like I was getting somewhere. Too bad it mostly all fell apart once I started moving forward. I’m still having trouble keeping my heel down, and I had a realization during the workout tonight: what my brain thinks is a straightened back leg is still very weak. When I push it all the way down it does what its supposed to, but right now it’s still a conscious effort. More practice should make it more natural, hopefully.

The second class was a masters class in Jion. I literally felt like I knew nothing about the kata by the time we were done with it. All of the intricities, the fine points, and the body actions that Sensei Quinn took us through were really great. The differences in interpretation between the way things have been done here and the way that he experienced them in Japan seems pretty numerous when viewed through the lens of tonight’s workout.

I know that we’ve been told to do what the current instructor says (and I find there is a lot of value in that) but the question has been raised by some of the brown belts (and a few black belts) about what to focus on as “correct” when it comes down to test time. In the end, more training is good training so it probably doesn’t matter that much, but I do see the points that are being raised that it can be somewhat confusing. My advice to the brown belts are to take what they feel is correct from any given instructor and what feels natural for your body and the rest of the black belts will hammer out anything that is presenting itself incorrectly. Also, not to sweat the details so much.

Either way, it was an amazing workout tonight. I was both sweated out and tired, and my brain was overloaded with new excellent things to know about Jion, most of which I’ve probably heard before once or twice but the light bulb went on tonight. One of the main things that really got to me tonight was the fact that I *really* have neglected back stance. What I considered back stance and what I was shown tonight (and felt tonight, in the hip action) is a whole other thing. When done correctly, I can feel the power being generated. When done the way I have been doing it, I get a mundane blah feeling of being stuck in the mud. That was probably one of the coolest things that stuck with me from tonight. That, and I finally feel like I’m doing something after the high level x-block near the end of the kata.

As I said… good karate stuff tonight!