Definitely unexpected day today, but definitely worth it. Morning wasn’t highly physical, but the evening classes were.
Morning Training
To get the morning kicked off we played a small game involving three people. One person chasing, one person defending, and one person trying not to get caught. There was a count down and if the person got caught they would have to do the same amount of sit ups as the countdown was at when they got caught.
After this quick game we moved onto basics as usual and then the brown and black belts were sent aside to do some Ryukyu bo. Today we got up to number eight and then split into smaller groups once again to break down and get to talk about these, but only got up to number four. Was definitely a constructive use of time for all of us. At the end of the class we had the chance to have one turn at going through shushi no sho, this was great since I haven’t done this in a while.
I thought I had woken up by the time the class was over, but I sat down and that obviously wasn’t the case…
Little Champions
Straight into it this afternoon, all the people doing the intensive had run laps of the dojo and every lap we would do one more push up everytime. Usually I wouldn’t have as much trouble as I did today, my arms were aching from all the conditioning we did last night. So, every push up I did, felt like 10. Of course after doing many laps of that it felt like I had done 100.
Finally, we could stop,but soon we were starting to do some kicking. At first it wasn’t so bad, but we kept on having to add on more and more kicks every lap, until we had to do five kicks before our foot could touch the ground. Jumping kicks too, and lots of laps. When we had finally finished we would stretch and all of a sudden we would be on our feet moving onto side kicks this time instaed of front kicks. Everytime I had thought we were done, there was more, because straight after that we did it all again, but instead this time with a round house kick. Luckily by the time we had completed all this the little champions class was over. Saved by the bell I’d say.
Karate Kids
Even warming up in the kids class was difficult, my legs felt like extremely heavy weights. After warming up the class split up and the seniors were sent across to the hot side of the dojo and did some speed training we were all hot and sweaty and worn out, but next we did a similar thing to the start of the little champions class. This time instead of push ups we had to do sit ups, and instead of running up and back we had to go up and do one sit up and come back to do one sit up. All the way up to 15 which meant we had done 240 sit ups all together. I was glad to be done with that, but yet again there was more.
This time we were in groups of three, one person on the bag and two people partnered up. The person on the bags had to do 80 round house kicks at head height whilst the other two would go slowly, turn for turn exchange kicking and holding. It is definitely a lot harder than it looks.
Finally, we had the chance to slow down a bit (not for long) and stretch out our bodies. Now we had moved onto doing some kata and tonight we did a lot of repetition on kihon dosa yon. Going down the lines, we each had to count the whole way through the kata. After doing 10, we were asked if we think that we improved, stayed the same, or got worse throughout. To be honest, I felt I got worse everytime, so, to change that I had to stop focusing on how exhausted I was, and just say that I can do it. We did this 20 times more, and despite the fact that I was so out of breath and my muscles were sore, just changing my mindset was all I needed to be able to finish off strong.
I could tell that the intermediate kids class was quite slowed down compared to the previous classes. Except for the fact that we started off with a very competitive game, but after that the intensity was brought down quite a lot.
For pretty much the whole intermediate kids class we did some Chito-Ryu bo. All the kihons, kata, and basics. We also took some time to think about the application of the techniques for number 14 in a group context. At first I was finding it difficult to get my head around, but I was starting to get the hang of it after a while practising.
To finish off the kids class before our break,we slowed right down to literally lay down and breath for a while, practising correct breathing.
Teens/Adults
After a quick food break, we were back in doing a few stretches before joining back in with the rest of the class. We started off with just basic timing of all the kata we know, which was great since we haven’t really slowed down that much yet tonight. We did plenty of stretching after that which felt really nice on my sore muscles. For the rest of the class we did a big review on bunkai right from the start and as far as we could, until it was the end of the session.
Even though I wasn’t enjoying the kids classes at the time it felt great to just be able to have gotten through it all and the satisfaction of knowing that I gave it my all. I’m sure my muscles will be aching even more tomorrow, but it’s definitely worth it!