Over the weekend, we went down to Saint Louis for instructor training and it was a great time as always. Sensei Flowers taught a great class on teaching sparring combinations and hip action to lower and intermediate ranks, which flowed nicely into Sensei Brewer’s study of distance and timing. I made a minor ass out of myself by failing my distance check to determine how close I was to the back wall when helping to demonstrate one of the drills. Twice.
All of that aside, both of these seminars were excellent. Sensei Perrault taught a class on switching from sparring stance to Hangetsu-dachi in order to move more smoothly forward and backwards. My brain comprehended what he wanted us to do, but my body does not quite know how to do it. It was very informative though, and will definitely provide some food for thought. It was good to get to finally train under Sensei Perrault, the last time I saw him was before the Shodan test that I passed when he was microwaving his socks in order to combat the oppressively cold conditions at the Lions club.
The final session was Sensei Hassell’s block on Tekki kata. This was really the first time I can remember working on the Tekki katas with him, and it was definitely a worthwhile experience. I got called out to demonstrate a realistic situation with Sensei Hassell where I played the part of an untrained moron attempting to grapple. Sensei Hassell showed that many of the movements of Tekki Shodan can be used to create a cylinder of invulnerability around him, I couldn’t get close enough to do more than touch his gi let alone do any physical harm to him. For those of you that are untrained, he accomplished this using a hail of blocking and striking techniques and not any sort of mystical forces. He saves those for the real world. 😉 Special thanks go to
The black belt test went very well! Cochrane-san got his Shodan and Chandler-san got his Nidan. A few students from our sister dojos came in to test, including a Sandan candidate and a junior Nidan candidate both of which passed. Congratulations to everyone that put their training up for scrutiny, it is always a nervewracking exercise.
Sochin Counter
Accomplished / Goal == Percent Complete
1750 / 2000 == 87.50%
Average Kata per Workout: 16.67
Estimated Workouts Remaining: 15
Workouts that gained more than 1%: 37
Workouts that gained more then 5%: 2
Round Kick Challenge: 15 / 1000 == 1.50%
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