329

by Gene Crawford | Aug 23, 2016

Kata; Sempai was teaching class tonight and it was Kata. Kata is his favorite part of Karate, maybe next to fighting. We warmed up with Taigo 1, 2 & 3, then did a combo of Taigo 1, 2, 3 and Pinan 1 all together. Pretty cool and worked my brain as well as body for warming up.

Then, he had made this deck of cards that had a Kata written down on each one. We each took turns drawing from the deck and then had to perform the Kata in front of the other students. I drew Seisan and I feel like I did it justice. I got winded half way through but fought through without too much drama. Need to work on that one for endurance but overall felt good. Then at the end we all did Naihanchin together as a bigger group.

Very good class. Got me out of my comfort zone and I enjoyed doing that.

326

by Gene Crawford | Aug 16, 2016

Kata: Saiunchin
We drilled what we know of Saiunchin over and over, then learned 3x more moves into the Kata. Then drilled it over and over trying to perfect what we know of it.

I felt really good, well not good, I was very very tired, but I felt really good about working my breath during Saiunchin tonight. I felt like I got to that point where I *needed* to utilize my breath to be able have any sort of power in the blocks and strikes. Which is good, now I need to train recovery time between doing Kata and then finding a way to find that breath zone much earlier on in the class.