Our first visit to the Mapleton classes…

Last night Tasha and I were successful in our mission to train with the Mapleton crew. Tasha and I got there fifteen minutes early so we decided to do some sparring that became suddenly musical a little way into it. Tasha’s really a lot better at that than she lets on.

I see from Sensei Hartman’s blog today that he was busy getting the kids into a basketball camp, so he showed up about 5 til 6. No big deal, we were still stretching out anyway.

The class started with a litany of basics, I could tell Tasha’s hips were bothering her despite the kooshy padded carpet floor in the room. Afterwards she told me that standing in kebadachi makes her hip muscles hurt, which is something that I found interesting. She said that it kept feeling like they were going to slide out, but kebadachi is about the most locked that your hips can get into the joints. I told her we should try doing sets of tension in kebadachi every day so we can strengthen those muscles.

We split up and worked on kata for quite awhile, I got the blue belts. I think I helped them out in a few different areas, despite the fact that I’ve not really focused on Heian Sandan. I kept stressing the importance of stance, and also the importance of understanding the basic idea behind what it is that these weird techniques are doing. Bruce-san was having trouble with the standing double blocks, so we worked on those extensively. He kept getting his hands confused, so I tried to make it a point to show him that you’re basically just switching hands as you come up from the outward block.

The second class consisted of sparring combinations. I was having trouble gripping the carpeted floor, but I was doing a marginally better job of springing forward. Having never done this before, Tasha was getting frustrated but she kept up trying until her hips couldn’t take any more. We did a few sparring drills, it was all that I could do to get my partner to get anywhere close to hitting me. I don’t know if I look fragile or what, but she just wouldn’t lay one in there.

I’m going to see if Tasha is willing to come to Mapleton every Wednesday night because I much prefer it to helping out at the Boy’s Club. Tonight I will be at the YWCA by myself, as Tasha works until 7:00-7:30 or so.