Sunday, April 11, 2010

I actually like that smaller studio, mainly for the floor. I feel that there is not enough oxygen in the room, but I'm glad no one passed out. Perhaps the training was not hard enough??

So here is what we covered today:

Kata:

• Heian Shodan
• Stance/Step practice - Front stance & Back stance

Kihon Kumite:

• Stepping fwd/bwd, reacting to an opponent (me)
• Oi-zuki fwd/ Age-uke bwd, reacting to an opponent
• Oi-zuki fwd/ Gedan-barai bwd, reacting to an opponent
• Basic 3-step sparring: Jo-dan (face attack) & Chu-dan (stomach attack)

Kihon:

• Kicks: Mae-geri, Yoko-geri Keage, Yoko-geri Kekomi
• 3 kicks continuously, in place

From Free-style:

• Yori-ashi (Slide)
• Gyaku-zuki (reverse punch) with Yori-ashi
• Kizami-zuki (jab) with Yori-ashi

Kicks actually looked pretty good today, so let's keep working on those. We'll do the basic kickings (as you step: front-stance for front kick, side-stance for side kicks) for you to get used to the exam drills. Outside-block is another weakness, so we'll cover that this Thursday.

I don't remember if we offically announced, but these people will test this month:

• Ron
• Amy
• Jon

And these, I hope, will be ready by the end of next month:

• PJ
• Chris
• Vonzell
• Nate
• Michael

We will have an exam every 4 months, so our next regularly scheduled exam (after this month's) will be in August/September, however, since there are enough of you who will be ready very soon, we will hold a special exam next month. (Wait, didn't I announce this already? I think I wrote it on the blog earlier, but Nate didn't know and asked me about it today, so here it is.)

We will have a guest examiner for our regularly scheduled exam, but I will be the examiner for the special exam next month. Be prepared well, because I ain't gonna give you an easy one...!

We have been focusing on the exam a lot lately, but that's just because this is our very first one and none of you really knows what to expect. So I want to make sure that you are all becoming confident about your first one. But again, testing is completely optional, and you can choose not to test at all ever. I also want to apologize that it is not very cheap, but this is the standard fee schedule of our national federation, and the dojo is not making much profit from it. After the first exam, we'll go back to our "regular program" and try variety of fun stuff (not that the basics are boring, but I hear some people want to spar... Eiko??).