First, let me say Happy Thanksgiving! It was definitely a nice long weekend, with some fantastic training sessions prior to Thanksgiving Day, and one incredible session the day of. It's been a while since I last posted so this one is bound to be a long one.
Last week was marked by the last exam prior to final exams in a couple of weeks, so I was largely very busy preparing for the test on Monday. Finished up with that and revved up ready for training on Tuesday night. Tuesday night we were lucky enough to be blessed with a fairly large adult group. It was largely a kihon-based class; proper body mechanics and impact training utilizing solid stances and focused techniques. Very little jiyu-kamae, so we were forced to create dynamic tension and action. To say the least, I had trouble walking by the time I was done. The fact that I had done wave-loaded squats the day before definitely did not help me much.
Wednesday night was far more relaxed. Sensei was busy interviewing a potential Krav Maga instructor for the dojo (I'll get to that in a minute), so I focused on kihon-ippon-kumite and jiyu-ippon kumite with one of my kohai. Nice and easy, just trying to remember all the old combinations and defenses that we used to practice in the dojo. My favorites will continue to be the kuzushi-waza (unbalancing techniques) - this term relates specifically to take downs (typically taken from Judo) and sweeping (common to Shotokan).
Thursday morning it was time for our annual Thanksgiving day work out. The day promised to be a good one; a large deck full of adults looking to earn their turkey dinners. The class started with calisthenics and warm-ups to get us ready, then straight into kihon, starting very basic (oi-tsuki, mae-geri and gyaku-tsuki, etc.) and quickly jumping into advanced kihon (kaiten-waza and shuto-uke combinations). Once we were all warmed up, we moved onto jiyu-ippon kumite. This we did for a very short time before we moved onto timed partner drills. One minute-rounds, back and forth with shift forward mae-geri, and shift back to avoid your partners. Sensei was gracious enough to use SST (Sensei Standard Time), and one minute became closer to two minutes. We continued this for some time with different techniques. To finish off the class we used similar timed rounds on the body shields, gyaku-tsuki, empi-uchi, maeshi-mawashi-geri and mawashi geri. I'm pretty sure I lost at least 3 pounds of water weight that class.
The weekend was stressful, packing up my brother's apartment as he is in the hospital and will be there for some time, and further the landlord sold the building, and all tenants are being vacated.
I think my only regret from this past week was the lack of weight training, I've been trying to stick to the NROL (New Rules of Lifting) Strength 1 routine, and been having trouble. I definitely need to start getting my gym time back into my routine. I can't afford to let myself slip.
Tonight is going to be a busy night, straight from school to work, and then who knows how long I will be there. After that it's either off to the gym or the dojo, preferably the gym. I'm coming to the conclusion that I really only need 3-4 days in the dojo to really keep my technique and form sharp, right now my focus really needs to be on speed and power, and that means more gym time. We'll see how well I can stick that this week.
Wish me luck!
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