So, long time no post. I seem to have very little free time on my hands lately and web board posting has dropped off the map of things.. but I am back, hopfully for a long while. I think the last bit of posting I did was shortly after my blue belt grading in late october. Things are going well, learing new things and figuring out new things from older material all that sort of thing. I seem to have more of those 'lightbulb moments' than I used to, where things just click and i go "oh, i get it" so I'm pretty pleased with that - hopefully it continues. Our Karate club moved just before the new year and instead of being in a room in a gym in the basement of a strip mall (so only 8 foot ceiling and crappy owners - our dojo was the best kept room in the place) we are in a old highschool gym! It's awesome - super high cieling of course, half the floor is the padded things we had before from the Ju-jitsu club we shared the space with (they moved with us too) and the other half the gym floor is covered in that play room puzzel mat stuff ( http://www.wondermat.com/index.htm ) like that stuff, awesome for lunging kicks and quicker movement because you don't sink into it. plus the wood floor under is much nicer than a poured concrete floor! It echoes a lot so you have to shout when you are giving directions during a class because it gets so loud. Ok yeah the title.. our club is having a tounament as well on March 25th - to celebrate the new place- just people within the club, everyone gets a medal (1,2,3, 4,4,4 kind of thing) so it'll be some nice competition but also everyone goes home happy at the end. I'm going to compete in all three categories - sparring, kata and weapon kata. My hopes in sparring are modest - i'm a fair to good over all sparrer, but it seems to me at least that with the exception of a few guys most of the people have one advantage or another over me, either really fast hands, or great kicks or something. I have to really work on sparring techniques and bringing my level up, becuase even with the advantages those certain guys have - their other side is a fairly large weakness. for example one guy Dave would eat me for lunch if i let him get close enough to strike but I should beat him if i keep him at kicking range. So any sparring techniques, or drills you guys know would be good for extra practice. For the forms part I'm not certain what I am going to do yet, we can do one of the forms we have in our cirriculem, or a modified version or one we have come up with. So if anyone has had to do this type of thing before it would be great for input as to which normally does best - especially with your own sensi's watching and such - would they rather see a form they have taught you done to perfection? or a modified version showing that 'ok he's taken what he knows and added it in, or something that is all new? For the weapons forms I'm probably doing a bo form (I would do a sai form but the pair I had were stolen and the guy i tried to order a replacment pair from on e-bay seems to have stiffed me!) and it'll be one I make up - simply because we only have 1 bo form that we practice in the club and with everyone else likely doing the same form the differnt guy (i hope) will stand out more and that might be good. thoughts? And to close it's good to be back and posting again! I'll get some old/new pics so as to show the new club up here sometimes in the next couple of days.
So yeah my hopes in sparring are improving as the time creep forward. One of the guys at my club - Pete - is helping me out by smashing me around between classes. we spent over an hour yesterday sparring with him giving me pointers and advice and a couple of the sensei's came over now and then to add in their 2 cents. The plan is to keep this up at every karate class at least until the tournament (so at least 8 or 9 more times) so that I can develop a bit of a strategy and maybe 3 or 4 set combos to run on people. Training for sparring with Pete is good because he knows what he's doing, not afraid to take a good hit or give me a good one to know I have left something open. I had my bell rung a couple of times last night but it's taught me to keep my hands an extra bit higher and that type of thing I didn't seem to learn when people just tag me.
