2007 Workout #65: 40th Anniversary Clinic!

The workout yesterday was fantastic. For the first session, Sensei (Elaine) Harter was running us through a basic workout. The workout was originally designed as a youth class, but I think that the distribution of youth made them rethink the plan at the last moment and it got retooled for use with a more general audience. It was still a very good kihon warmup.

Honestly, I wasn’t all that excited about the day in general until about midway through the first sessions when Sensei Flowers took the floor. He then proceeded to run us through a postively epic class on combinations. It was action packed, there wasn’t much time for breathing, talking, or anything else that could be misconstrued as relaxing. It was a rip-roaring good workout and THEN it was ‘s turn. He led a very good class on generating power in the “brand new” kata of Heian Shodan. It was really cool to look around during the class and see yellow belts ripping it up with strong techniques and good hip action as a result of the drill.

After that, we had a small mock tournament to give the students some practice on what a tournament setting looks like. We got the white and yellow belts, ran them through their paces, and then were given the brown belts and had them do their katas. Most everyone did well in the first section, however our brown belts were having a symphony of brain farts once they got up there and had to pick a Heian kata of all things. I have many jokes to make about why this is, but I’d better keep them to myself unless I prefer being assailed at any moment by angry brown belts.

Then it was a lunch break, , , Sensei Quinn and I went and commenced eating at Wendy’s. We swapped some stories and before long we arrived back at the dojo for the second half of the day, starting with a great workout on “sen” (taking the initiative) by Sensei Brewer. The guys from Pekin were pretty accustomed to the drills that we had to do during this seminar, as we’ve been exposed to varying levels of this concept over the last few weeks.

I did have some good success with Erbe-san and Rush-san, and it was a lot of fun. I realized during this section of the clinic that some of the go-no-sen (taking initiative later) processes seem to fit the way I train. They fall out of me somewhat naturally and this makes me happy.

The final session for the day was run by Sensei Harter, and it was on sparring mindset. I absolutely loved this session because it cemented some very real concepts that I think apply directly to preparing for the Sandan test. The whole notion of attacking with every change in your hip position was interesting, and made me realize that there are a lot more opportunities for attack than many of us think.

We also did some combination training, and I found a few gems there too. One of the combinations (front leg roundhouse kick, reverse punch, rear leg roundhouse kick, reverse punch) seemed to be pretty natural for me and I found myself pretty speedy with it, so I’m definitely going to try to apply that one in my sparring practice.

The day wrapped up with some mock sparring matches, where Sensei Harter put us in a scenario and we had to react accordingly. I faced off against a familiar opponent in Brewer-san, and was given the scenario of being up a full point however I have been run out of the ring once. Going out of the ring again would mean that I lost, so it was my job to stay in the ring, and his job to essentially come at me with everything he had and attack since he was down on points.

He came at me, I cut to the corner (ah, training for tournaments in Macomb, how sweet it is) and proceeded to deliver a pretty solid side thrust kick to his stomach. We reset, and then he was told that we only had 5 seconds left. That meant if he wasn’t coming in before, he sure was now. He ran in with some punches, but I tried some of my sen training and blocked two of them and drove forward with a jab and put it right in his breadbasket. In the end, I was very pleased with my performance.

A few of our other guys did some similar scenarios and the day was complete. We took some pictures and then scuttled off quickly to ‘s wedding reception. More on that later.