At first I was afraid, I was terrified.

Kept thinking I could never live throughout this tough fortnight.

Now I spent so many nights thinking this could go so wrong,

But I was strong.

And I kiai’d like King Kong!

Oh yes I!

I did survive!

As long as I know how to punch my spirit will stay alive!

This week I would relive,

With experience to give.

I have survived!

I have survived!

Hey hey!

~

So yeah. That just happened. After the final class today I ran inside belting this song at the top of my lungs. Weird, I know. But totally worth it.

So a recap of what happened throughout Thursday and Friday. Thursday was physically tough and our bodies were pushed to the limit with shiko dachi and thousands of punches. Now those punches were tough. Twenty-odd people in the class, everyone counted ten punches, then everyone counted ten double-punches, and then everyone counted ten triple-punches. I didn’t even bother counting, but the entire time I was thinking ‘I will make the next punch better than the last’ and ‘Do not stop kiaing unless you have to sneeze!’. It hurt my entire body and I felt it the next morning, but so proud for not giving up.

Friday morning was all physical. The shiko dachi we did made it very difficult to climb the stairs at work afterwards. But the evening? Let’s just say that for the last eight years I’ve been mimicking the Showa without any knowledge of what I’m supposed to be saying. We spent an hour devoted to learning the correct pronunciation of the Showa and of all the classes throughout the intensive, it was that class where I feel I learnt the most.

Let’s talk overall. Throughout the entire week I had an amazing team of people surrounding me and helping me push myself to be better. There was Bailey and Klaudia, who when I was behind them for speed training they were much faster than me and it pushed me to be faster to keep up. And little Sam, who was a great partner for training bunkai with zanshin and performing at 110%. William, where going through kata with him was great for realising my own flaws, and together we worked to fix both of ours. Savannah, who encouraged me to step back and think differently and more creatively about things to improve kata and bunkai. Big Sam, whose kiai I kept trying to one-up through the entire second week.

Through this fortnight I’ve come to realise that I am not ready to grade just yet, even though I was aiming for a February grading. I need to go back to the basics, e.g. kime, shime, zanshin, conditioning, cardio. Currently they are not an acceptable level to grade. And now that the intensive it over, I’m planning to train in conditioning and cardio from home until I feel it’s good enough to warrant a grading attempt.

Doing the intensive has felt so great. Not while working out so much as the buzz afterwards. The mixture of early mornings (which gave me extra hours to do things during the day) and physical activity (which woke me up and prepared my body for actually doing stuff) made my daily performance better. I felt that I smiled more, even during class, and it was refreshing.

Now the entire time I’ve been working with Sam and Klaudia, all of us vying for a scholarship to go to Japan for a week or two and train with the senseis there.

Sam came to every morning class and afternoon 6.15 class without fail. He had his towel (which was always as damp as his gi at the end of the night) and his training attitude. I never saw him yawn or stop and take a breath because he was tired. Well, if he did then I didn’t see him. Whenever he was my partner for something he was always focused, but didn’t hesitate to crack a smile when warranted. During speed training he was a tad slower than Bailey and Klaudia, but that was because he made sure that every punch was accurate, he had kime and his stance was strong. Rinten, shiko, cosi dachi, you name it. Everything was flawlessly executed and still incredibly fast at the same time. It’s not difficult to understand why Sam is a black belt. He always puts in his full effort and then some, turns up consistently and I can’t help but be inspired by him.

Klaudia, as far as I know, turned up for every single class throughout the fortnight, including day classes. Of course she was tired, but that didn’t stop her. She tried hard every class and put in so much effort and kept such a positive attitude throughout the entire thing. In speed training she was one of the fastest and it was a task and a half merely keeping up. Her kiais were terrifying (especially during the more senior kata). Throughout the entire fortnight she was an unshakable rock and oozed strength and commitment. She was nearly always in good spirits and I couldn’t help but admire her charisma when working with the Little Champions and younger kids.

I thoroughly enjoyed working with both of them during the fortnight and learning from them. Both of them stand an equal chance at the scholarship and it’ll be a close race. This intensive has been an interesting, exhausting, and full of learning and did I mention exhausting? But so worth it. Pushing myself past my limits felt amazing. And you know what? It’s the beginning of the year and there’s so much more to do.

I just want to thank Sensei Martin and Sensei Sandra for holding this intensive and being there the entire time and for all their pushing and encouragement. It was a great experience and one that I would gladly relive again.

This morning was easily the most challenging of the 6am classes.

Speed training. Check.

Struggling to keep up with speed training. Check.

Stretch time. Wait what?

Everyone in the senior group had their legs worked (dare I say to the bone). And during the last five minutes our arms were worked too.

At the time all I could think was ‘Oh god please let it be over’ because everything was killing and I was hungry and tired. But, with the gift of the amazingly helpful hindsight, I could appreciate the burn throughout the day. The evening though, was a different story. The burn was more of a hindrance than a help and made the afternoon physical activity a bigger challenge.

During the first afternoon class we did half an hour of repetitive four-kick combo, one lap speed and the other one slow. It was exhausting and again, in hindsight, I should have had more water during the day. Hindsight would be a great superpower to have… not. It would be useless.

Today was hands-down the hardest day of the intensive physically. Despite not facing the aches from the first week, it was still tough because of the burn and buildup of lactic acid and whatnot.

Knowing that there are still two more days to go is torture. It’s like you’re competing in a race and the finish line is just over the next hill but it’s a steep hill covered in uneven rocks. Still though you’re trying your hardest to get over the hill and across the line no matter how much pain you’re in. Having the finish line in sight makes it even harder, but that’s just me. Mainly because I suspect that the next two days will end in borderline exhaustion and a desire to never climb out of bed.

Nothing new really. It just depends if you look at it as exhaustion or success. My biggest goal for the next two days is to see it as success. No matter how tired I get, my overarching goal is to not give in despite how hard it gets.

This morning’s class was probably the hardest morning session we’ve had so far.
Physically: We done speed training again which was good, then done some hectic leg work doing lots and lots of shiko datchi holding it very low while our partner was making their way up and back down the dojo rotating the cement block’s. and then we done shiko datchi in circles while the partner held shiko datchi very low holding a bow out in front of them, there was also more to that. It was an intense let work out but also a great one i felt my legs burning all day i very much enjoyed the work out though.

Mentally: Through the day some personal things happened and it obviously was stuck in my head i thought it would be gone by the time i got to karate but i was wrong. i was very distracted and yes i will admit the standards of my effort wasn’t very good at all to start out with. My mind was much too clouded, but because i was very disappointed that i let my problems lower my efforts i made myself work harder till i had no energy to think about the things that clouded my mind by the last class i was fine, i let the thoughts slip out of my head for a while and trained hard, i was very happy that i could do that so i could focus on my training instead of my problems.

Today’s class was very interesting and different.
Firstly we got a surprise visit from Sempi Anthony from the Gold Coast Dojo, it is always great training with him, very uplifting spirit and loves learning more, also brings some educational techniques from what he learns in the Gold Coast Dojo.
We got to focus on our own individual stepping, all step’s in any direction: i was mainly focusing on keeping my heels down and trying to get the whip from my hips. Then we had to add some hand movements, which was easier to work on my hips with, this activity was very helpful for what i want to achieve which is getting more whip into my techniques.                                               We then got to do some Bo work (Shadin) Changing directions and working the hips.

On top of that we got to do some more opponent throwing only using the hips and light arms. which was goo cause i got to work with Sensia Sandra and Anthony, so i go to work with different heights and strengths, which was very helpful as when i done the same throw on both of them i had to alter it so it would work with either their height or strength ect, so i didn’t just get use to doing it that one way. I enjoyed this class very much and i feel as though i have improved with using my hips for the throws instead of just my arms. Also the whip in my hips which i improved a bit in class tonight when the black belt group had to keep repeating Sochin (kata) which is my next grading kata so was good to have time to practise continuously, i focused on the whip in my hips and the pull back for my techniques.

The title says it all. Sunday night I went to bed thinking ‘wow I can’t wait to go to karate tomorrow night, it’ll be so fun!’

Fast forward to the following morning, where getting up later than anticipated resulted in not eating a decent breakfast to get to work on time which resulted in feelings of dizziness and nausea. Plus it was hot.

Despite throwing up, I spent the entire day battling nausea and no desire to eat. Thankfully I managed to shove something down before karate and drink bucketloads of water because that made me feel slightly better.

For a while I didn’t think I would make it to karate that afternoon. I debated saying I was too sick to go, but that’s not the point of the intensive. The intensive is about turning up no matter how horrible you feel. Sure, I requested to take it easy and Sensei Martin and Sandra were more than accommodating, but turning up was the real win. Despite feeling awful, I tried my hardest to challenge myself and stretch a little further and use my hips properly in the final lesson.

My favourite part about training today was that we got to work with lower belts and give them pointers on kata. I love learning new things about kata just so I can pass them on to junior belts and help them improve. Even people around my own belt. I love passing on knowledge and experience and helping someone come closer to their own individual goal. Today allowed me to do that.

The next week is going to be even more challenging than the week past. Last week we were coming off a holiday and my muscles were not used to being pushed. This week represents the finish line in sight and it’s torturous. There’s four more days before we’ve officially survived this training, and then there’s the Saturday beach training to go to as well.

Last week went so fast, and this one will too. It’s only four days. So bring it on!

So tonight’s class was a tad different but was a great lesson
The class was a bit more slow and a focus night.                                                                                       I was able to work on my pull back in class not just for my punches but for everything mainly just getting the pull back to initiate the technique instead of focusing on the technique that’s going out, by focusing on the pull back for it will actually give you more reach and more speed and accuracy for the technique, something that i have to work on quite a bit more but was good to have time for it tonight.

Also another interesting yet kinda difficult thing we focused on tonight was our lower body (legs, hips and feet.) Was understanding how important our lower body is to our techniques, to understand this we have to go through all the kata’s with only using our lower body, just with our hands behind our back. It was quite interesting as we usually forget how critical our lower body is because we are usually mainly thinking about what our arms, chest and head are doing. While we was doing this it made us really work on what our legs were doing so without our arms the technique would still work.

Later in class Sensia Sandra had us black belt’s attack each other and we had to step in and pretty much only use our legs to throw them we could only use our arms mainly just to direct where they were falling. and we was allowed to contact them with our hands until we had stepped in and started to feel them more. its actually a bit surprising how difficult it is sometimes not relying on your arms so much. But it was a great lesson to be learnt and i would really like to do more focusing on this in class. Something i found that not just me but a few of us black belts was doing was they weren’t stepping in with their hips as much as they should of been me also, but as we started doing this it was much easier to put the opponent in an unbalanced position so it was then much easier to through them or disable them