2006 Workout #19: Never grab Sensei’s lapel while he’s seated…

Tonight was a great night!

Dad, and I all arrived around 5:40 pm to get a little early kata in. Our plans were somewhat foiled by a flurry of activity at Hollis Rec Center, but not to be defeated by Biddy Basketball my Dad and I did closet kata in the hallway outside the dojo.

I got my 15 Sochin in for the night, but they were fairly distributed throughout the workouts. I was feeling pretty good while doing my closet kata, and even better once I got to stretch out in the dojo. I led warmups, and I discovered something frightening, yet wonderful.

Ever since I hurt my back in January of 2003, I had been unable to do crunches correctly. It was as if my stomach was too weak to get my torso off the ground, and it always made my lower back hurt. Tonight, I did 40 crunches. I didn’t just muddle through, I did them better than I ever have. I can now lift my whole torso off the ground without pain! I think that all of this Sochin training is doing something positive to my center. I still have a long way to go, but small indicators like this lead me to believe I am on the right track!

Sensei Brewer helped me out with some of my tension abnormalities in Sochin tonight. There are still a few parts in the front half of the kata where I’m not using my center right or getting the right feeling of “radiating” tension out to my limbs. Sensei also was encouraging me to punch faster.

As I sat and thought about this later, I suppose I can liken the feeling I’m after to gathering stormclouds of tension for the first two slow moves, and then *crack crack* two simultaneous lightning strikes. Right now my lightning bolts are like headlights (easy there, Dave), not fast or sharp at all.

I thanked Sensei for the help on Sochin after class, to which he replied “I didn’t help you with Sochin, I helped you with tension.” Very true. I can tell my path to learning Sochin the proper way will be very much with Sensei Brewer, as he has done this kata successfully for his last two black belt examinations.

During the second class, while my Dad taught those that weren’t working on the demo, I got to stand in as Sensei Hartman in the chair self defense demonstration that he and Sensei Brewer usually do. I’ve never gotten a chance to do this before and it was a lot of fun playing Make Believe Sensei Hartman (something I’ve been doing since about age 10).

During this demonstration, I got myself laughing a little because as Sensei was talking me through some of the steps, all of my internal alarms against behavior that would cause my death were going off. These actions include me grabbing his lapel as if to pull him out of his seat, swinging a folding chair at him WWF-style, and pulling a knife on him. A few times I swore I heard the sound of Red Alert aboard the Starship Enterprise. I’m glad it’s doing this on Saturday and not me. 🙂

This demo is going to be *great*. We have a lot of slightly changed elements to our normal roster (mostly casting decisions), but we’re going to put on a good display I’m sure.

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Sochin Counter
Accomplished / Goal == Percent Complete
205 / 2000 == 10.25%
Average Kata per Workout: 17.08
Estimated Completion Workout:118