This morning’s Kangeiko workout went very well. It was warmups, followed by basics. Sensei Yaguchi focused on elbow strikes; our basic combination consisted of sliding in with an upward elbow strike with the lead arm, following by a chest level elbow strike with the rear hand. From there, we stepped forward drawing the arm across the body and performing a knifehand strike to the face and then finishing with a reverse punch. There were so many people in there we had five rows that had to each take their turn doing 4-5 sets across the floor.
After that it was partner training time again, this time our partners were 6th dan or higher. The attack was lunge punch, the block and counter was a high level knifehand strike and then step in with a chest level elbow strike. After about 15 minutes of doing that combination with different partners, it was kata time. Today it was Empi. Because of the crowd, there were several groups each taking a turn doing a kata. The first one that we got to do was a medium speed kata, taking care to spend the time necessary to “make good technique”. After everyone got done with this, Sensei Yaguchi instructed us simply with “11 second! Do kata with speed” and we were told to begin. I finished first in the nidan group of people, which I was pretty proud of. Sensei Yaguchi praised our group with his usual statement of “No trouble!” and we were done. I have several things to work on in my training, but speed I can do.
More tomorrow!
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