Ooooooh we’re halfway there, WOOOAHHH LIVIN ON A PRAAAAYER!

That’s right. We are halfway through the intensive and looking at the weather forecast next week, it’s not getting any cooler. It’s supposed to be even hotter. This means bringing three water bottles instead of two, and a towel to wipe the sweat off my face.

This past week has been one of the most challenging of my time at karate. Throughout the nearly eight years I’ve been at the dojo I have never done an intensive or pushed myself this much. I calculated the hours I was at the dojo this week at 20 hours. That’s almost one entire day at the dojo.

For the first three days my body was so sore I had to roll out of bed because my arms were too sore to lift my body. The soreness lessened on Thursday and was nearly entirely gone by Friday, except for my legs from doing these splits.

Now, on Saturday, it’s completely gone.

I thought getting up at 5 every morning would be the biggest challenge. It wasn’t. The biggest challenge was peeling my sweat-soaked gi off after every session. It got incredibly sticky. Getting up was the easy part. The morning classes were quite enjoyable and prepared me for the day ahead. Doing exercise in the morning really makes you feel like you’ve done something productive and the endorphins makes it easier to look forward to the day, no matter if you have a full day of work ahead.

During the holidays I felt so fat and unhealthy because of the lack of exercise. Now I feel fitter and stronger and not fat at all. And that feeling is so great for my self-confidence.

I’m proud of everything I put forward during class, even the absolutely terrible techniques I put forth during speed training. Each class I pushed myself to do better and try even harder. And I benefited from it.

Did I hyperventilate? No.

Did I get a stitch? No.

Did I ever feel like fainting? No.

Did I give up? No.

It might not seem like a big deal, but given my recent track record when rocking up to karate, it’s a big difference. You need a balance between mind and body to be able to perform well and recently I’ve been unbalanced. With both my mind and body working strong and working together.

Not only has my mind and body been balanced, but my life outside the dojo as well. Usually I work without a chance for relaxation, but this week I took some time off of doing things to just sit and let everything relax. Even taking an hour out of each day to go fishing, play a game or read a book was enough to prepare me for work and another karate session. The balance between working hard and resting is what allowed me to fully energise between each session. And having a balanced diet helped too I guess.

At least one of the two weeks is over and the finish line is in sight. We’ll just have to take it day by day and see what comes out of it.

Definitely was a great week of karate I’ve enjoyed every single lesson I’ve attended so far, yes of course its been a struggle with the heat and the cramped muscles but that’s why I’ve loved it. It makes you work harder and there’s nothing better then the feeling of accomplishment right after you’ve done a big high speed activity and you get to the end and your hearts racing and you have sweat streaming down your face. I personalty love it just makes me feel as though I’ve pushed my self to my limit and higher.

I’ve added a few photos and videos to display what we’ve done through this past week. Great effort from everyone that I’ve had the privilege of doing the intensive with, its great to see that everyone has kept up the great work throughout the whole week. Also a thank you for lifting me up in class and helping me push through each class and helping me work harder and faster.

Lots of FUN!

Yes i will admit i’m looking forward to a bit of relaxing time over the weekend,, watching some movies, sleeping more and having some me time. But i am very much looking forward to the week to come. I’m sure there is much more to do that we have not done yet, and i’m looking forward to some more speed training as it will be more then helpful for the student who gets the scholarship to Japan as circumstances with be much more intense over there.

Training for the scholarship great work guys 🙂 All this extra work is great for not only training for the scholarship but helping us learn more and moving towards our next steps and our goals we want to achieve for this year coming.

Ill see everyone bright and early Monday morning, but for now have a good weekend, don’t get to lazy though haha.

So, in class tonight we done many things, Conditioning was one of them. We got challenged on how many we could push out in a one time period of 2 minutes, this was for each conditioning activity (push ups, sit ups, squat kicks and then recently added bur-pees.) These are all very critical criteria to work on for stamina, agility and intensity. push up’s are great because they build up the muscles in the arms.  Martial arts include lots of punching,  and so the push ups build up the arm muscles; helping you push out more punches in a shorter time period without your arms tiring. Sit-up’s are great as they work the ab and stomach muscles, no matter what your doing in karate your ab muscles are always contracting, so it is good to build up your stomach muscles. Squat kicks are another good one as they really get in there and are great for the upper leg muscles; you definitely need them strong for kicking and holding certain stances and positions. Also the newly added  bur-pee’s – so today in class we all had 2 minutes on each one, I was actually very happy with my outcome. I completed my 100 sit up’s, 100 squat kicks, and for a person who has never really done bur-pee’s ever, I got up to 62. I am very happy I could push that many out. However for the push up’s yes, I had perfect structure from head to toe and reaching all the way to the ground and all the way back up, but I could only push out 56, so i definitely need to work on them more, specially being a black belt.

Another thing I loved about tonight’s class, we did another lot of high intensive and high speed basics and then kata. We was also challenged to go through all the advanced kata up to the highest one we knew as fast as we could with better form and making our way back down to the lowest advanced kata (shihohi) and see how many times we could get through it. As we was going through all of this, Sensei Sandra was saying that it will be a lot more harder and intense in Japan. I don’t know about anyone else but that made me think, well I have to train harder and faster and push aside the fact that I had a massive stitch in my stomach. All the muscles in my body were throbbing and I made sure I pushed myself harder and faster. I made myself keep up with the fastest person in the group or get ahead of them, which I did and I pushed myself harder even more. I’m sure I`ll get lots more time through-out the rest of the 2 week intensive to get heaps of chances to work more on that and I look forward to more challenges to come.

In this mornings class, we went through some high speed stepping and punches. Asking our self how to get more speed in our stepping and how to get to the finishing position quicker.
Keeping everything to the centre is the answer to get the speed, for example when stepping making sure you have shime keeping those thighs scraping against each other with every step, keeping those elbows in at all times and keeping the head well positioned and not moving around. When i put all that into play i found i had much more speed especially while doing Rin-Tan and Hun-Tan, i also had more stability as i was spinning to get to the end position. I found it very helpful and for a morning class was good for y mind to focus on. I’m looking forward to do some more focusing on that in the 9:30 am class coming up

Day three.

Physical status: My aches have aches.

Mental status: Not bad actually.

The last few days have been draining as one would expect. Thinking ‘I might do the intensive, it’ll be fun’ and then having it creep up so quickly was the real killer. It’s real. It’s happening. My body will be pushed past its limits and best not forget that I volunteered.

In the past year I’ve struggled with karate. It was always an effort and I always felt like hyperventilating or passing out. The problem, I found, was my diet. I wasn’t eating or drinking enough, mainly not drinking enough. Once my diet was fixed up it was less of a challenge getting through just under two hours of karate. It’s always been tiring, as with any physical activity, but with the proper preparation of eating and drinking, it’s less so.

For the intensive I’ve put a lot of focus on eating the right foods and drinking enough water throughout the day so that there’s no headaches, no lightheadedness or dizzy spells and definitely no hyperventilating. When undergoing something as tough as this intensive, you have to be on your A-game and take care of your body. Bodies are like cars; they need fuel to function.

And repair time. Sleep is just as important as food. I aim for seven hours minimum each night, but so far haven’t managed a nap during the day. Napping is one of the best things to do during an intensive like this, as your body has time to rest and repair before afternoon training. It’s just unfortunate that not everyone doing the intensive has an opportunity to nap in between the morning and afternoon sessions because it’s beautiful.

In the coming week-and-a-half everything will be tested physically and mentally even more than it already has. The aches of my aches will have aches and my greatest desire will be to sleep. But I can take solace in the fact that I’m not alone: everyone doing the intensive is in the same boat. And the boat is sinking. While on fire. It’s just a matter of swimming instead of sinking.