2005 Workout #118: The Rabid Greyhound…

Tonight’s first class was the same as last nights, with a few variations. I was pleased to get to show my newfound skills, he’s not that bad at this whole concept himself. I don’t know what it is about this specific style of sparring, but it makes me literally smile when I’m doing it because it feels so good.

I think that this is the missing piece to my sparring that I’ve always somewhat danced around without ever understanding. I still can’t do it as well as I would like, but I completely get the concept now which is always the first step. Sensei Brewer pointed out to me on Wednesday that I already have exhibited some of these abilities in the past, but the trick is that they were subconscious. They were the moments of “aha! Something worked!” but then they were gone, hopefully with the watchful eyes of Sensei Hartman making sure I don’t do stupid stuff I’ll be able to take this to the next level.

I’m really eager to try mixing this with the other topics we covered on Wednesday, but I think that will be more of an uphill battle for me because I’ve been trying so long to keep my footing that losing it again intentionally would be like trying to forget to talk so you could understand English better. Hopefully, in time this too will come along. Maybe when I’m 50 or something.

The second class was a primer on Bassai Dai, which I enjoyed immensely. I haven’t done that kata much since the Hell Week before my Nidan test. For some reason doing this kata on the stage in Mapleton has cropped out as one of the painful moments of preparing for that test. I think it was the fact that the exam was so close and we (Mike and I) were being inundated with so much new information that it trigged The Panic. Doing the kata again now felt good, I can really feel where the connection has been growing from all of the intensity training we’ve been diving into lately.

I still find little things that I’m unsure of in these kata, and the more I look around to try to find consensus among my peers the more question marks pop into my head. I found a couple people that had completely different interpretations of the techniques in Bassai Dai, so different that I had to ask the question which was correct. This time, it turned out that I was right, but I’m sure it was just a fluke.

I love the fact that there is always that one more unattainable fact, that feeling that you can’t quite get, and that one punch or kick that you can’t quite make feel right. The challenge never ends with karate-do and I love every minute of it.