Today marked the beginning of this year’s Kangeiko. Kangeiko literally means (so I’m told) “dead of winter training” and is treated like equal parts Karate Homecoming and Spirit Training for this organization. I left the house around 4:30 am to pick up Paul B. before heading down to Denver for the training.
Just like last year, I was met with a packed dojo full of mostly black belts. We started off with warmups and basic combinations, but with such cramped quarters it was difficult to really do full techniques. One of the combinations we did was chudan reverse punch, jodan reverse punch, and then rear leg front kick. We moved on to doing one time sparring where the combination was stripped down to just the jodan reverse punch sliding in. The defending side could block and counter however they wanted.
At one point I ended up across from someone in the group of 5th to 7th dan during this drill, and she instructed me to not block and attack at the same time but instead to block and focus on the pull back and then counterattack. She characterized the way I was going at it as “not good”, indicating that counterattacking without a full draw was ineffective. I found this rather perplexing… as I understand it sen-no-sen is a widely accepted means of counterattack. All the same, I said “Osu!” and did it her way but I can’t help but wonder if either I was doing it wrong or if she just didn’t pick up on what I was trying to do.
Tomorrow I’m getting up to do it all over again!
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