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Last night was one of the most glorious workouts! Sensei Hartman elected to give spirit training aimed specifically at the children of the dojo, with some spectacular results. We were doing three way kick with some consequences for those that put their leg down (graciously, the adults were exempt from punishment). The first offense of putting your leg down warranted 5 pushups, the second offense yeilded 10 pushups, and the third time earned you 20 pushups. I think that if you extrapolated this idea out, you would probably find the calculation for figuring speeding ticket fines.

Anyway, a few of the black belts noticed that some of the kids weren’t keeping to the proper punishment for not keeping their leg up, so we called a few of them on it. McCabe-san got after a certain kid, known to us as Crash (we found out his name tonight, for the record) and he was trying to do pushups with his butt in the air. I walked up behind him and told him to put his butt down. After a few continued attempts to do them with butt in the air, I poked my index finger in the middle of this kid’s back and told him that he would keep doing them until his butt was down and he did his 10.

He was sniveling about not wanting to do it, not being able to, and how bad it hurt. I told him I didn’t care and he would continue on. A few times he collapsed with a thud (hence the nickname) but McCabe and I struggled to get him back at his task. Then he did something completely unexpected: broke down crying. I’m not talking about normal “this is hard” tears, I’m talking about can’t move, collapsed on the ground sobbing.

At this point I did not know what to do, but I noticed that Sensei Hartman was on his way over so I elected to get out of the way of the train. I’ve never heard Sensei Hartman put on the stern father/police voice before, but that’s exactly what happened. He told the kid to look at him, and after several reiterations the kid finally looked up. Sensei told him that he could do it, and he wouldn’t be making a fool out of himself in the dojo. After much prodding, the kid finished his pushups (with much better form) and then ran over to his grandfather who was reading a book crying that he wanted to go home. His grandfather looked up, told him to get back in line and finish the class, and that sent him into another crying fit. Someone recommended that he go and wash his face before he came back onto the floor, McCabe-san went with him to make sure he did so and came back.

We heard some heated discussions coming from the bathroom and hallway, but after a few minutes he came back in and finished the class. Hopefully now he realizes what real karate is like.

With this in the past, we moved on to Bassai Sho in the second class. The last memories of this kata that I have was Sensei Hartman working on it at the old upstairs Bloomington dojo. I really could only remember snippets of technique. It was a great distraction from the intense stance training we were doing before that… Sensei Hartman is really into the deep stances after seeing Sensei Yabe. I can’t say I blame him, but my legs sure do.