I attended my first full week of karate classes last week. So far, I have discovered some sad things:
1) My weak left shoulder, which still has a tendency to try to come out of socket even after the surgery, does not like shuto position, particularly when practicing the position in isometric pushing against a partner’s arm. So annoying.
2) The only tight tendons I have in my whole body are apparently in my ankles, each sprained multiple times when I was younger. This is now preventing me from having stances as long as the sensei would prefer. He is, however, much more willing to allow a turned out back foot in zenkutsudachi in order to get the length. So now I need to stretch my ankles, which is a weird feeling.
3) My speed, power, and endurance are all lacking a great deal, which isn’t very surprising. The endurance will probably come back fastest, as it already seems to be improving, so I’m hopeful the others will follow.
I did do some fun things, though, besides finding out more personal faults. I learned an entire new kata! I love kata. It was even a completely new one to me, because it’s not one that anyone at my old school ever did. Niju Shiho, which you can see a video of here.
It contains a lot of really annoying in-between stances, which will be my bane in really getting this kata down well, especially since one of them is an extremely short, cramped version of hangetsudachi, which is from my favorite kata, and therefore quite thoroughly ingrained. And why does fudodachi have to be right in between a front stance and a back stance?
On Friday night, after we (me and one other student) had learned the entire kata, the sensei asked us, “So you remember all the moves now, yes?”
Us: We think so.
Sensei: Good. Now we can fix it.
Such an encouraging statement. (He’s a non-native speaker of English, so a lot of the stuff he says makes me smile.) I’m supposed to go again tonight, so I guess we’ll start on fixing it.
I’ve clearly been thinking about karate a lot in the past week, because I wrote two posts about it over at Geek Buffet. Check them out if you haven’t already:
Taekwondo vs. the Traditional Martial Arts
More on karate in the Olympics
No more blogging this week, though, because I’ll be at a conference in AZ until late Sunday afternoon. Think happy hydrating thoughts for me. It’s 116F there!
