Todays 6am class was very hard to get to. I thought I was a morning person but I’m beginning to realise I need more sleep. Weather it is throughout the day or more in the morning I don’t mind. To contradict that though I am going to miss training everyday once this intensive is finished.

Morning class:

This morning we had a focus on bo. 3rd Kyu students and above worked on Ryukyu bo numbers 1 to 7. After doing sets of 10 on each sequence we split into 3 mini groups where we broke down each sequence into great detail. There wasn’t a lot of time so we only got up to number 5 but I did take a lot out of it. As noticed in last nights class, I need to accelerate from my hip right from the beginning of the technique.

Once I got home I slept for about 3hrs and then went to the beach to let the waves beat around the muscles in my legs and hopefully help with the tightness.

Little Champions Class:

This afternoon we split into two groups straight away; was intensive students on one side of the dojo and everybody else over the other. Sensei Martin got us to begin with slow and controlled front kick. We held it out for the count of three and then pulled back. Once we did a couple of laps we got faster. The fast pace stayed for remainder of the class. We did 6x laps of front kick, increasing by one kick each technique every lap (first lap = 1 kick each leg, second lap = 2 kicks on each leg, etc… ). Following this was 6 laps of jumping front kick. After just this one cycle I was exhausted. But we weres only 1/3 of the way through. We repeated this with side kick and also round-house kick. Safe to say my legs felt like lead for the next hr.

“Will it be easy?

Nope

Worth it?

Absolutely”

Karate Kids class:

I started off this class still barely being able to lift my legs from the last class but during the warm up, in my competitive nature, I had to help my team be the fastest! It is all good fun until you push a little too hard and overheat. About 20 minutes into the class I felt dehydrated and went quite dizzy while doing more sweaty activities. A short drink break fixed me up for a while.

At about half way the intensive students began to do some more bo. We focused more on Chito-Ryu bo. After going through the kihon kata we formed a line and did 100 consecutive kirikaeshi (hope that is how you spell it) in shiko dachi with the person in front and behind us. This was yet another physical challenge which really burnt the leg muscles. Again another activity that tested the mind and body strength that we all worked together to complete!

Adult Class:Adult Class:

I had some really painful stomach cramps at the start of this class so I sat out and observed for about half an hour. There are so many ways to learn and it is good to change it up sometimes. While watching them training I began to understand a little bit better how to generate power from the ground up into my punch. It is all about the tension throughout your body.  Also in yesterdays blog post I spoke about getting the illusion of tearing the paper with your feet and squeezing the thighs. I tried to put this into practice and it was real effective throughout the class and all the other ones as well!

Hopefully throughout the next couple of blogs I can talk more about techniques and body awareness but for the now, it is still proving to be a very mental and physical challenge. Thankyou everyone that is training alongside me