Author Archives: Sam Phillips

Still Going Strong

Only a short day in the dojo today since squad training hasn’t started back yet (1 morning class 2 kids classes), but still a very productive day.

Morning Training

Today the morning session was unexpected. We were told to think about something that we will work on today whilst we sat in seiza. We stood up and got told to do your own personal training and work on the things we thought about in our head. I am personally not a big fan of this way of training but when I think about it, it is a very good learning tool because you get to work on what ever you want to or need to, where as in a normal directed class, the focuses are supposed to be aimed towards everyone but sometimes it will not suit every students individual needs.

In last night’s post I was talking about how I am trying to mainly focus on my posture and breathing. To practise this I spent most of my time doing basics, kihons, and kata. By the time I had finished everything there was around 10 minutes left and Savannah grabbed to help her try to remember the sequence to the first sai kata. Having a go with the sai with the focus of posture and breathing did make me think quite hard about what I was doing but it ended up feeling way better after this.

Little Champions

I was feeling very refreshed at this stage in the afternoon because I knew that there was less than two hours to go!

Posted by Sam Phillips on Friday, 11 January 2019

After doing some sai once again, the girls had to create an obstical course for the boys and vice versa. We are all very competitive so we tried to make it hard for the other team. It was great to have some fun making each other sweat!

Karate Kids

To start off the last session of the day Savannah, Bailey, William and I did a weapons performance for the karate kids and went straight into a game to warm up (not that I needed to warm up haha) which definitely involved lots of noise but great fun!

Posted by Sam Phillips on Friday, 11 January 2019

For most of the class we did lots of kumite drills and I must’ve been pretty tired because I forgot what a reverse punch was and accidently did a front kick instead… oops haha!

Posted by Sam Phillips on Friday, 11 January 2019

Posted by Sam Phillips on Friday, 11 January 2019

The last 10 minutes of the class and everyone was worn out… well at least I was, and this was when we all got introduced to the 300 kick challenge. We had to choose a partner and each do 300 kicks on a bag each and finish in 10 minutes. Claire went first and got to 50 and needed to rest, but I wanted to show her that it is possible to keep going so I when I went I went all the way through, 1 to 300 kicks in a row. I was hoping that this would help so that she realises that she can push beyond what she thought was possible, and that’s exactly what she did. With about two seconds to spare we both finished all 300 kicks in just under 10 minutes. Let’s just say there were lots of high fives and to finish Claire got her new belt… Great reward I’d say!

One more day to push through tomorrow and then a well deserved rest on Sunday ready for week 2!

Motivation is Kicking In

Starting to get the wheels turning again and finding it easier to accelerate in my training as I get back into feeling fresh again. The main things that keeps me going are my goals, both short term and long term. I know that if I don’t have any goals ahead of me it can feel hard for me to train since I would be working towards nothing. So, I am always keeping in mind why I am here so I am able to keep pushing ahead.

Morning Training

It wasn’t a fast pace session this morning, unlike the morning sessions over the past couple of days but we did a some bunkai and got to work with some partners that I don’t usually work with. It was great to learn from others and be working with different body types as bunkai is always different with other people.

Kids Classes

In the little champions and kids classes, training wasn’t really that physically challenging until the end of the intermediate kids class where we had to hold a plank for as long as we could and I was so determined to not give. At around four and a half minutes my whole body was aching and shaking, I was also starting to find it hard to breath. At that point my body physically couldn’t not hold itself up and I dropped… I was disappointed in myself because I knew in myself I had done way better previously and about half the class was still on their hands and feet. But I thought, if it wasn’t my mind that gave in and it was my body, then I should be so proud of myself that I never actually gave up… If I continue to push myself to 100% every time I train, I will have no choice but to get stronger.

Teens/Adults Class

I don’t know what changed in this class, but my mindset had changed since the last class. I was making sure that every single thing that I did was at the best version of me.

For this session I was really focusing on my posture and my breathing which I feel is necessary at the moment in my training because lately I have been thinking about too many things at once, so I want to bring my attention to more specific things.

During the class I was helping out newer students, which wasn’t just beneficial for them, I also did benefit from it as well as I had to communicate my understandings to them which really made me have to think about the techniques more deeply in my karate.

We had a small amount of time to work on more sai tonight. Some very useful feedback was given to everyone as a whole which really made sense when I thought about it with the application. This feedback made the basics seem a lot clearer in my head and made it easier when I was practising too.

After a long class it was definitely time for some fun playing a very competitive game of scissors, paper, rock…

Who said the big kids can’t have some fun?

Fresh Starts

Quick Review of the past 3 days

2 lazy weeks off training and finally back into the dojo for a 2 week training intensive… Changing from being in holiday mode to a normal schedule again usually likes to take its time and I would usually feel unmotivated to do anything. Since I have participated in these training intensives in the past a couple of times I am starting to see the positive impacts it has on me both mentally and physically, so it wasn’t so hard to get moving again for the new year.

Even though it hasn’t been as hard for me this year, I still struggle to wake up in the mornings as I am not a morning person. Although I find it difficult to get up early I know that the hardest part about the morning training is waking up and turning up, but I know I have to push myself out of my comfort zone otherwise I will not achieve great results if I don’t turn up and give it all I’ve got.

On the first days of the intensive program I was having trouble getting through the afternoon because of the early mornings because by the time it gets to the afternoon it has already been a long day but, there is no point going to train if I’m not putting 100% effort in.

Training

In the dojo so far there have been a range things that I have been working on. The thing that has stood out the most to me is the amount of stretching and conditioning we do. I think that it is a great way to kick off the year and it is helping me get back to being more physical as I did not do much over the Christmas/new year break. The conditioning that we are doing at the moment is probably more mentally tough than physically because of the repetition and it isn’t the same type we would usually do either. It feels great to try new things especially after a long break.

Being back in the dojo means reviewing everything lots! Pretty much every class we will go through our basics but, it never gets boring because there isn’t only one way to practise which makes me feel engaged when I train. Just going through all the kihons and kata in different ways makes it a better learning experience for me. Going through it everything really fast and pushing ourselves or even slowing it right down to focus on specific main points like breathing, having good posture etc.

In some classes over the past few days we have briefly covered some kumite. For this we mainly only practised one combination and the focus was to have good distance at the beginning and the end of the technique, plus having as little gap in between the two punches as possible to create maximum speed on our combination. For me this wasn’t a too hard to execute when practising on the bags but as soon as we moved to an actual partner I was already finding it difficult to adapt. Doing these drills helped me realise what I need to really try hard to work on making this a great learning experience.

Last night and this morning we did some sai training. Since I haven’t done this in a while it was great to clear some cobwebs out of the way as well as learning new things as well. Last night, we went through the sai basics, kihons, and the kata. For me, I already knew the first sai kata but last night I learnt the second one too with some help from Bailey.

Happy 10th birthday Lachlan!

Oh yeah! We can’t forget Lachlan’s 10th birthday. Always great to see all the karate kids bringing a positive attitude to the dojo with big smiles and always supporting each other.

Great getting back into the swing of things and can’t wait to see what 2019 has in store for the year to come!