2007 Workout #58: Ampitheater of Pain…

It was just the Nidans last night. We were having some trouble decided what to do, since there was a large body of white and yellow belts, a smattering of intermediate ranks, and the normal complement of brown and black belts. Kata was suggested, splitting into groups was suggested, a test workout was suggested. Space was limited, and then came up with the bright idea to do the style of training that we created several months back, where one side did calisthenics only with basics instead of kata.

This was generally agreeable, so the order of the night was hard and fast. I recommended that the side doing basics work on making things technically correct while the side doing the exercises was purely for endurance. We had enough black belts to keep the exercise side “motivated” while the rest of us got to test fists, stomachs, and give technical suggestions.

Unfortunately, I only got about half the workout in since I was leading the charge. The exercise side was blessed with multiple iterations of pushups, crunches, the new crunches that recommended, japanese situps (with someone testing), and hovers.

On the other side, we did just regular basics: lunge punch, front kick, rising block (reverse punch for upper ranks), downward block, outward block, and inward block. We rounded out the workout with five minutes of “shifting” so we could work on our cardiovascular endurance. I must’ve needed these because my calves are stiff today. They’re not really sore, but I can tell they haven’t been worked out in that fashion since Macomb.

The second class was Sensei Oedewaldt’s to drive, so we split up into kata groups. I got to work with Hennessey-san on Heian Nidan, and he did a great job. The workout degenerated down into some basic work as well, since he wanted some help with the side kicks and the opening few moves of the kata. He was really getting it by the end of the workout and did a great job.

I’ve heard some rumors that I have earned a few additional nicknames from the workout sessions tonight. That must’ve meant that I was doing something well. 🙂 If that something was torture, then I feel pretty darned good about myself. Karate is supposed to be hard every now and then, people. My Dad really shouldn’t have introduced me to the Human Weapon television series. Now I have inspiration. 🙂