2008 Workout #38: ASKA Instructor Training…

As previously mentioned, we traveled to St. Louis for instructor training. It was a good, long day of training including some black belt preparation classes designed to get us ready for our next black belt exam.

Thanks to some direction from Sensei Hassell, I have decided to stick with Sochin as my Sandan kata. Apparently, our interpretation of some of his instructions from before about selecting katas more appropriate for our body types was wrong, he would rather see us continue to invest in a kata that we have committed to for a long time and that shows off our talents. He said that coordinating our kata with body type is important, but for third degree black belt it is equally important to internalize.

We then had the opportunity to perform our kata for Sensei Hassell, and I screwed up Sochin. I turned the wrong direction going into the knifehand blocks and ended up facing the wrong way, and ended up directly in the path of the other two guys that were also doing Sochin so I had to stop. Sensei Hassell reassured me and said that things like that happen, and after doing 2100 kata he knows that I know it and that the first half looked very good. This doesn’t mean that I’m going to ignore Unsu and some other katas, but I need to continue to polish Sochin and have it presentable for next April.

Then came the kumite. We were instructed to do drills that forced us into moving to the angles and attacking immediately and not settling into stance, and for some reason this really worked for me yesterday. One of the highlights was stepping to the 45 degree angle and dropping a roundhouse kick right on top of ‘s left ear. It felt very natural and I wish I could summon that kick at will!

When I’m moving to the angles correctly it feels almost like I’m “dancing” like a boxer. I don’t know if that’s the right feeling or not, but it sure did make me more mobile. Other drills that Sensei Hassell had us do were relating to setting up and breaking of timing, and responding at the first sign of an attack with a reverse punch. He also showed us a drill where he wanted us to move in and out quickly, that is something that I need to get a handle on and I plan to work with and Sensei Quinn more in the next few months to figure that out.

All things considered, it was an excellent day of karate stuff.