2005 Workout #13: Unlucky for some…

Last night was quite interesting at Mapleton. I got there about five til six, and there was hardly anyone there. They started flooding in about six o’clock, and I decided to wait around until 6:05 to see if Sensei was going to show up after all. I concluded that he probably wasn’t, so we started class and I had Erbe-san lead warmups while I went to do the paperwork.

I was right in the middle of signing cards when Sensei Brewer showed up. I was a little surprised to see him, but now that my mind looks back on it I think he said he may make it on Tuesday. Either way, I told him we would’ve waited if we knew he was coming and he said it was no problem. He then told me that “why don’t I go ahead and teach the first half of the first class since I was geared up to already.”

So I did. We started off slow with some simple basics like lunge punch and front kick. I wanted to keep it simple because there were a few people that had < 5 workouts in there. I think by the end of the night we covered lunge punch, front kick, downward block, rising block, inward block, outward block, back stance, knifehand block, kebadachi, and side thrust kick. I was surprised to look up and see five minutes until seven on the clock, since Sensei was going to stop me halfway through. I took the time to break things down quite a bit, which Sensei praised me on later. I also came up with a new way to gauge foot angle in side thrust kick: Sensei has us stand on the edge of our feet to feel what the kicking surface should be. It dawned on me that this should probably be where the foot is when it's out in kicking position, so I had the class go through the first two movements of the kick (up and out) and then lower their foot from the out position back to the ground. If they were standing on the flat of their foot then their foot angle was incorrect, and I actually had white and yellow belts doing the foot angle correctly by the end of a five minute session of working on it. I was very proud about that. In between classes, Sensei told me that I did a really great job and he didn't want to stop me when I was on a roll. The only critiques that he gave were that I tended to talk a little fast (this was a problem because of bad acoustics, he said) and that I could stand to demonstrate a little more on the upper ranks to make it more vivid in the minds of the lower belts. He was right on all counts, but my Dad and Erbe-san were sweating hard so I couldn't have been too far off. I've always had that problem with talking too fast when I'm in front of people, all the way back to Pekin High's Speech and Debate Team. The second class we did some more advanced combinations and then had a giddy-up Heian kata review at the end. We got through Heian Godan before time was up. Erbe-san and I stuck around for a few minutes and did an Empi before Sensei said we had to clear out. Apparently they close the Rec Center at 8 pm, which was news to me. For the record: I did work out with the class for most of the first class, so I am counting this as a workout even though I didn't really get to focus on training until the second class.