Today was the last day of Kangeiko, which always brings equal parts optimism and complaining about creaky joints and muscles. After warmups, we headed right into combinations. Today, it was sanbon-zuki (three punches) done up and down the floor. After that, Sensei had us perform a shuffle step with a front leg front kick. First, he counted three reps across the floor, then two, and then we had to cover the distance using only one technique. I was able to do it fairly well, and it felt comfortable.
Next we transitioned into partner training, which was one-time attack. The defender could use any block or counterattack. This went on for quite awhile, and then Sensei had the higher ranking black belts come out to do semi-free one time attack with the same set of techniques as our Shodan test recommends back in the ASKA. After this, they moved quickly to free sparring, or “house sparring” as Sensei Yaguchi calls it. It was fun to watch, I keyed in on a couple of things to try to use myself. Sensei then called our group out, and we did an interesting sparring drill where you were in natural stance, and you could freely punch with either hand but you also had to defend and counter all at once. He was adamant that no-one move their feet, opting to swivel hips and keep distance with the head but the feet had to stay rooted.
Then it was kata time! Today it was our individual kata (mine was Sochin). I really tried hard and Sensei Yaguchi corrected my back knee in the last position and that was it. Everyone got their turn and Kangeiko was finished!
Immediately after class was a mock kata tournament. Sensei Yaguchi was not watching the mock tournament, opting to tend to the lunchtime preparations in the basement.
The lower ranks all took their turns, getting scored on a points scale system. The black belts got to divide up into a men’s and women’s division. In order to make things go more quickly, they opted for pairs of competitors to come out and do a random kata together and then scored them by flag to determine who would advance on to the points-scored round. I got across from a very strong, broad looking guy named Brian who I hadn’t met before. My buddy Paul was in a different pairing, so we were somewhat relieved that we didn’t have to go head-to-head right off the bat.
Paul’s turn was first, they selected Heian Nidan for him. He did an admirable job, with good speed and power but did not advance. My turn was shortly after his, the kata that was selected for us was Heian Godan. The kata went by in a blur, but ultimately I did not advance either. I can take some solice in the fact that the guy I was up against ended up winning the black belt division with a truly beautiful rendition of Sochin. After the class was over, the main judge that was scoring my set of people gave me some advice. It seems my eyes were not fixed on my target and my hips were a bit high as a result. Sensei Tarrant praised both Paul and I, noting that my kata looked good and I would have been fine if I hadn’t been up against him. One of the other judges chimed in that my kata looked very strong and was very good and he was on the fence.
I’m not really disappointed that I lost since it was a just-for-fun tournament and I feel like I represented myself well. I am happy that I got some good advice that I can work on and that Sensei Tarrant seemed happy with my performance. I am happy that we participated in five of the six workouts this week. Kangeiko is a good way to reset and get excited about karate again for the coming year. Even though I have many scheduling problems in February thanks to birthing classes, I’m excited about getting back in the dojo as much as possible.
More soon!
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