Worked the kids up in a warm up of 5x rounds of various body weight exercises. But made sure to get 50x push ups.
Then got my group together and we worked on learning Too San up to the double San Don Chun Gin(s). They are learning well and starting to look good.
Thursday night class. The non-mandatory one. We worked hard, did about 500 kicks tonight. After a short warm up/work out we did a ton of side kick, side pull kick and side kick check drills with side kick fake and side kick body punch drills. Then ended with 100 ½ round kicks. Good night.
Second Team Dojo Kata practice. Working with my 3 students we continued Too San. Started at the beginning with one student. Got pretty far. I hope they practice!
Kicked off the 2017 Team Dojo season tonight with a first practice class.
I am now “officially” a coach for the team this year. Pretty cool! I’ve been assigned Too San and 3 competitors to learn it. We got a great start tonight.
I’ve also been made the “official” fight coach for the team this season. Leading a fighting class every Tuesday night to get the kids and adults prepared for fighting and physically/athletically too.
SUPER PUMPED ABOUT ALL OF THIS!
I will go on record and say that this is my single favorite picture I’ve taken all day. Gene, you have been such an INCREDIBLE asset to so many of our youth today in their fighting divisions that it made me so happy (and proud) to see you pouring yourself into your OWN SON!!! Look how he’s looking up to YOU!!!!
– From Sensei
We had another tournament this weekend in Myrtle Beach. It was a bit of a haul to get down there Friday evening. Everyone was getting on each other’s nerves as we drove. Not much fun. We got down there and checked in and then went out for some seafood before checking out the evening’s Karate. We got there to see two of our Blackbelt’s do their synchronized Kata. They did pretty well I thought.
The next day we got up and hit the tournament. It was probably the worst run event i’ve been to so far. It was really a mess. That said we had a good time with the kids competing. Both my boys did pretty well with 2nd and 1st places finishes between them. Overall Team Dojo cleaned house on Forms and Weapons. I coached the youth in fighting as much as I could the remainder of the day. There was some pretty overwhelming competition there from other schools in fighting, but we stayed tough and fought our fights. Some of our kids did pretty well in their divisions in the end.
I had the best time coaching my youngest at the very end of the day when most everyone else had gone home. He was really worried about fighting because there were some other tougher bigger kids in his division. But when his time came, he got his game face on and started stacking wood. I was so proud because he showed no fear and just went at it. He came in 4th out of about 10 boys, many of whom were much, much more advanced and physical. Great end do the day right there.