Even though this is the last official day of the 2 week training intensive, I will still be doing one more blog post tomorrow after beach training to wrap things up.
Little Champions
To kick start the morning, Timothy (one of the little champions) has been training for 2 years, and today he was presented his little champions black stripe belt! He is the 5th little champion in this dojo to achieve his black stripe belt.
In this morning’s little champions class all of us who are participating in the 2 week intensive took on a leadership role. We did some basics and us leader’s just had to be a good example. As well as having some focus time, we also had some fun throughout the class. At the end of the class as a part of the fun Tim helped build an obstical course for everyone to enjoy.
Karate Kids
Since it was William’s last lesson for the intensive, it was only appropriate that William lead the warm up.
Throughout most of this morning’s kids class we did lots of stepping and punching. We were in groups and practising mostly rin ten, kaeshi and oshi zuki. For me personally, it wasn’t a great day for rin ten because I was falling all over the place! I did manage to get some good laps in though. When we were doing oshi zuki was alright today since sometimes I mix my hands and feet up a bit, but today I was trying to stop myself instead of stumbling back/forward after finishing my punch. I do find doing kaeshi quite difficult for me because my hands go faster than the rest of my body. So, when I try executing a punch they’re not always full punches or they’re not aimed towards the target before actually punching.
Lastly, in the karate kids class we went into teams and raced across the dojo and back…
Teens/Adults
This morning’s adult class was a bunkai focus with the seniors. We started by doing some niseishi bunkai, one slow and one like you would do at a grading. Then we chatted with our partner about what we need to work on most and do the bunkai again. With Savannah the focus was to be more scary and with Renae we focused on our posture. After a while just doing niseishi bunkai we worked on the block and how we should receive the punch. We just experimented a bit at first and I came to the conclusion that it works best for me when I have my eyes up, good posture, and having my arms placed in the correct position. After working on the receiving of the punch, we moved onto the basic throw. Everyone in the group when throwing someone tries to pull the other person down and we end up leaning back. So, we practised with the idea of throwing being exactly like a shiko dachi punch. Another habit a lot of us have is using our arms too much. To make sure we were not using our arms to much we were only allowed to use one receiving arm and rely more on our stance.
Everyone has done amazing to complete the 2 week intensive!
