New Dojo

On Monday September 21st 2009, I opened my own dojo club at Cold Harbour school. This is an amazing milestone in my karate journey.

To be honest with you, my main motivation for opening the club was to be able to raise enough money to fund my own training. I'm living on a tight budget and I could not justify spending money on my training when there are other priorities to take care of within a family of 6!

However, something unexpected happened. After the first night at my club, I was absolutely buzzing. I never expected to get such a feeling of happiness and excitement. It was totally unexpected - but, a major bonus. I have had this buzz after every single lesson. When I told my own Sensei about it, he smiled and was really happy for me. I could tell he still gets the buzz himself.

I often feel really happy after a good hard training session. I feel better for having gone. Refreshed. But, the feeling of running your own club - well, it's just something else!!!

Improving yoko-geri kekomi kick

Whilst practicing Nijushiho kata, I have been disappointed with my kekomi kicks. The fundamental issue can be traced back to my knee injury 2.5 years ago. However, I'm not going to use this as an excuse. I am determined to overcome this and make my kekomi kicks awesome (again - because they once were)!

I have gone back to the beginning. Practicing from Kiba Dachi moving sideways. I video'd this to try to isolate what was going wrong. By running the video's back on my digital camera in slow motion I realised that the first part of the kick, raising the knee into position, was OK. The problem was in the kick out.

I was not thrusting with the hips.
I was not kicking from the hips.
I was stopping my leg from extending fully.

All of the above 3 points were caused by an internal psychological barrier which didn't want me to thrust and extend my leg. Probably because my knee injury was caused by stamping down into fumikomi (Jion).

As a result of not practicing the kick properly, I have lost quite a bit of flexibility in my legs too.

So, going back to basics, I am training by doing gedan kekomi kicks. But, by doing this, I force myself to thrust the hips in; to kick from the hips; and, make sure my leg is fully extended!

I have also started using my old ankle weights. I put both weights on 1 leg (= ~2.2 kg) and do 3 sets of 20 knee raises. Then switch legs and do the same. I also do 3 sets of 10 leg extensions from a chair (because I can't afford a Gym membership and my wife won't let me put a home multi-gym in the house :-O).

I have been doing this training for 1 week and today I noticed an improvement in my kekomi kick during Nijushiho kata practice. Fantastic!

However, I must maintain the discipline to keep this practice up because it's not perfect. Just because I have seen a slight improvement does not mean I should slacken off this training programme.

Today, I am better than I was yesterday. Tomorrow I will be better than I am today.

Determination Matters

During my 2 weeks break I kept up my running.

But, towards the end of the 2 weeks I had a really bad run. I started walking much earlier than usual. And from that first walk, it was stop/start all the way home. This poor run made me feel a bit despondent.

So, the next day I set my mind to do the run again but, do it better. I also had karate training for 2 hours beforehand. However, by setting my determination, I was able to go for a good run. It wasn't 100% all the way home but, it was much better than the previous day! The determination in my mind made all the difference.

Today, I went for my run-karate-run routine and was able to complete both run sections without walking! Yes! Interesting, the feeling of determination was still there today. The determination to try a bit harder.

Mantra: Today I will be better than yesterday. Spoken with determination.

Run Martin, Run

Did 2 hours karate training at the dojo today. Then went for a 2.5 mile run - which I completed without walking any of it. Even the evil school hill towards the end. Good progress - twice this week despite a crap diet.

I watched my son going through some katas during the training today. I thought, "Hmmm, he needs a few pointers.". Then, towards the end of the lesson, he did Heian Sandan in his own time & speed - and it was very good.

The other night I worked on some of the problems I noticed with Nijushiho on the video. I wish I could fit more sessions in - but it's a bit of a domestic rollercoaster at the moment.

Frustrating progress

I'm one third of my way through my vacation time. It's a bit up and down.

My work on Nijushiho is coming along quite well. I got my son to video me doing Nijushiho on Saturday at the Loughton dojo. I then analysed the video to see where I needed to improve. Boy, oh boy, do I need to improve!!! The kata was slow and dull. It needs to be faster and sharper. Faster transition between the moves. More kime to create the sharpness. The kicks are awful so I've set up a routine using ankle weights to increase my leg strength and get those kekomi kicks looking much more stable (idea put both ankle weights on one ankle to increase the resistance!). There's a number of other things too.

But, this is the name of the game - self improvement. Today I will aim to be better than I was yesterday. I am a bit hard on myself in terms of slow progress, I really should make an allowance for being ill (multiple bilatateral PE). It frustrates me that I am further away from the standard I was at 6 months after becoming shodan.

However, things are moving forward. I ran 2.5 miles the other day - that's a good break through. I have also got my micro improvements for Nijushiho that I am working on. So, don't be too hard on myself!

I lost 2lbs in weight this past week. Excellent! However, I have 2 weeks vacation ahead of me. - hope I don't put 4 lbs on!

Went for a run, karate, run session this lunch time. I surprised myself by completing the first run. Surprised myself even more by running through Nijushiho 5 times. Then did OK on the run back, particularly at the end where I went through 2 katas naming each move in Japanese to get me to the end of my run.

I have been a bit down this week, and this has affected my training motivation. However, it helped that I researched some stuff on Ohshima Sensei this week. Today's run + my weight loss will hopefully give me a boost going in to my 2 week vacation ...

Recently, I have been analysing the Bunkai for Nijushiho. I am in the process of "internalising" a set of Bunkai whilst performing the kata.

There are some Bunkai moves to Nijushiho which I really like. For example, after doing kakiwake-uke, you can modify the age-uke + tate enpi in to an arm break. This is probably my favourite Bunkai for the whole kata. But it doesn't allow for a proper age-uke technique when performing the kata. So I stick with a more simpler set of Bunkai which allows me to perform the techniques correctly (block a Jodan punch with the age-uke and counter with the tate-enpi).

I picked up 10 stones and lined them up. Then I practiced Nijushiho whilst focusing on visualing the Bunkai. After each completion of the kata, I threw away a stone.

I often wonder whether it would be more productive to teach students kata by first teaching them the Bunkai of key moves, and then after they have had some fun learning the applications, we put it all together in to the kata. I think that some students need to understand the kata before they can "get it" and this would be a way of achieving this. However, I am also aware that different students have different learning styles so this would not suit everyone. Maybe one day, when I have my own club I will be able to try this theory out.