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!