Second week, and today’s training has really made me break through limits I have never broken before. Every time I break myself down like this, I feel like my mental toughness is growing stronger and stronger.
Didn’t get any photos or videos today… Little bit busy getting sweaty!
Morning Class
To start off an early morning, the class was slower paced. Although it wasn’t very physically demanding, my mind was a bit out of it from my tiredness since it is an early morning after all. Little did I know, I was going to be in for a tough one tonight…
Little Champions
Last week we did quite a lot of sai practise, but today we did a quick review on some Chito-Ryu bo kihons and kata. Straight after that we partnered up and did some kumi bo and we repeated one part lots of times… My legs were aching! So, I guess in the little champions class we were doing lots of repetition and pushing ourselves just past what feels comfortable.
Karate Kids
I was already feeling sore from the previous class and I definitely was not prepared for what was waiting for the seniors in the kids class. The task was to do every kata that we knew, but in between each one we had to do 10 push ups, 10 sit ups, 10 squat kicks, and 10 burpees… At first I knew it would be challenging, but I had no idea how difficult this was actually going to be. I started and about 3 katas in, I was already puffed… wow! I was finding it difficult to keep on moving, keep on breathing. I couldn’t think straight anymore. I had gotten to shihohai and about to start seisan when we were told to stop. This was a great relief to finally be finished, and it took me quite a while to regain my breath back again.
It was the intermediate kids class now and I was starting to feel slightly better. Back to bo, but this time we just went through the kata in front of a partner turn for turn giving feedback, but the main focus was kime. Spending most of the class on this was a good chance to get back to the Chito-Ryu bo in more detail since I haven’t done it in a while and we weren’t looking too closely into the details earlier on. With some helpful advice, I am finding that I am starting to get tight up in my shoulders and need to loosen up a bit at times. Getting to work with some great training partners over the past week and very grateful for the tips.
Teens/Adults
This session got going fast. We did a chunk of speed training and challenging our selves with a small amount of conditioning. Since we already did loads hard training in the kids class I wasn’t expecting to do much more hard training for the night. But, of course we repeated the same thing as the kids class… The kata and conditioning challenge, but this time I did not stop once and pushed myself 100 times harder than last time. I literally felt like I was going to be sick! This time instead of going to our highest kata, we were stopped after shime no kata… I never knew that I was capable of pushing myself beyond my first attempt at this. I feel the biggest thing that makes me want to accelerate that much more, are the people that are placed around me and their training attitude.
Over half way til the end of the intensive now and can’t wait to see what the rest of the week brings me!
I promise I will get a couple of photos in the dojo tomorrow… haha!