By the third day of the trip I was feeling like I had caught up on all my sleep and felt like I had pretty much adjusted to this new place. We started the day off as usual and headed down into the backyard for some quick training.
My main focus lately has been to fix up my posture. Since recently I’ve been experiencing an increase in power from my techniques, meaning that my posture and balance has been thrown out of whack. To work on this, we did some Bo and some kata. As my issues that needed fixing aren’t easy fixes, the Bo was used because it is more challenging to think about and to control when there is something I your hand.
After Bo, I did one of each of the kata have been preparing for the tournament, just to get the feel for the posture improvement. Yes, this was a challenge for me, but I still think that I did make at least small improvements throughout that session.
After getting outside, for some training, we headed inside for some downtime. Whilst we were sitting down, it was my turn for putting the Australian patch onto my sleeve. This was scary because it was my first time ever doing that and it was also extremely frustrating. But in the end I finally managed to get the patch onto the sleeve successfully.
By the time we had a little bit longer of a rest, it was time to head out for our first official training session with Taneda Sensei at Westbank, which was around a 45 minute drive. So, on the way we stopped by at a nice little Japanese restaurant to get some lunch and it was really well priced for how good it was.
The first official training with a class was in a park in West Bank. These evening classes go from 5:00pm-6:30pm (kids class) and 6:45pm-8:30pm, but usually around 9:00pm (Teens/Adults class). For the first class we were mainly observing and I also tried being involved to help some of the kids out.
For the second class we actually joined the lines and trained along side everyone else. As you could probably imagine, most of the training at the moment is basically focused on the tournament. Training here brings differences to my attention, as does even staying here. As I have said before, everything here in Canada feels very similar, but also just a little bit different. This also goes for the karate as well. It is very similar, but there are just small differences.
After pulling all of our kumite gear off, I had thought the session was finished, but not yet. From the small field we were training at, we ran to behind this big building on the top of a very steep hill. After we cleared the hill from pine cones and whatever else that would be sharp underneath our feet, we made our way to the bottom of the hill. Now we sprinted. We sprinted up the hill and our rest spot was the fast walk/jog back down the hill. We did this at least 7 or 8 times and when we thought we were done, there was more. For this lap we had to crab crawl all the way up to the top of the hill with our feet first. For me this was the most physically challenging even though we only did one lap of this, compared to the multiple laps of sprints. Finally, after a final lap of sprints we were finished and ran back to the small field to finish off the session.
By this point, it was around 9:00pm and we were invited to dinner at Boston’s Pizza which was amazing and delicious (very filling too). Since the drive back home was quite long, we didn’t get back home til around almost midnight.
And here is my third day of doing this jump. I completely forgot to do it throughout the day, so i ended up having to do it inside which made it a bit blurry, but I still had to do one.