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Karate class last night
Nov. 7th, 2008 09:50 amIt's funny: the longer I work at karate, the more keenly I am aware that my body can't quite do everything I want it to do. It's as if my abilities go up, but my desire for what I want it to do goes up even faster. A couple of years ago, I just wanted to be able to do a side kick without falling out of it. Now I can do that (most of the time) and I'm frustrated because I can't get the kick up high enough, or I'm not hitting the target precisely for where I'm aiming at the pad, or because I have trouble combining it with the hook kick. It's the glass half-empty syndrome, maybe.
Last night we worked on karate marching basics and on the first half of the Zhang du Moon form. On marching basics, we were working on precise placement of hands, keeping our stances deep (ooo, my quads!), increasing the explosiveness of our blocks. On Zhang, sensei went through the form step by step, slowly, teaching it to the new red belts. I've not been practicing it for a month and a half (I'd been concentrating on drilling with my bo instead, in preparation for the brown belt form, Discovery). I was a little shocked to realize how some of the details on Zhang have already gotten sloppy again (and I knew it, because I did it when I tested for my brown belt). Failing to chamber the knee hard when folding for the elbow smash, for example. I still screw up half the time when I do the fold for the chop: one hand is fisted and the other is knife-hand. I tend to have a brain fritz and do either two hands fisted or two hands knife-hand.
After sensei had led us through the first half of the form, step by step, she had the red belts step aside, and the brown belts, including me, did the whole form on our own count, at speed. It's only about two minutes long, maybe, but I'm frequently panting by the end, from trying to make the stances deep and the moves explosive. I snapped the hands out for the chumbi at the end and lined up with the rest of the class for the bow-out rather gloomily, thinking of all the ways I'd screwed up details. (I still didn't chamber that knee on the elbow smash, even though I was thinking about it.) As we headed to the back of the dojo to grab our coats and bags, one of the red belts exclaimed to me, "Wow, you were good! You were so intense!"
It startled me, when I had just been thinking about how badly I had done. When you're a white belt, you watch the upper belts and think they are soooo cool and can do everything so well. And when you get there your standards have changed, and you realize how far you still have to go.
Last night we worked on karate marching basics and on the first half of the Zhang du Moon form. On marching basics, we were working on precise placement of hands, keeping our stances deep (ooo, my quads!), increasing the explosiveness of our blocks. On Zhang, sensei went through the form step by step, slowly, teaching it to the new red belts. I've not been practicing it for a month and a half (I'd been concentrating on drilling with my bo instead, in preparation for the brown belt form, Discovery). I was a little shocked to realize how some of the details on Zhang have already gotten sloppy again (and I knew it, because I did it when I tested for my brown belt). Failing to chamber the knee hard when folding for the elbow smash, for example. I still screw up half the time when I do the fold for the chop: one hand is fisted and the other is knife-hand. I tend to have a brain fritz and do either two hands fisted or two hands knife-hand.
After sensei had led us through the first half of the form, step by step, she had the red belts step aside, and the brown belts, including me, did the whole form on our own count, at speed. It's only about two minutes long, maybe, but I'm frequently panting by the end, from trying to make the stances deep and the moves explosive. I snapped the hands out for the chumbi at the end and lined up with the rest of the class for the bow-out rather gloomily, thinking of all the ways I'd screwed up details. (I still didn't chamber that knee on the elbow smash, even though I was thinking about it.) As we headed to the back of the dojo to grab our coats and bags, one of the red belts exclaimed to me, "Wow, you were good! You were so intense!"
It startled me, when I had just been thinking about how badly I had done. When you're a white belt, you watch the upper belts and think they are soooo cool and can do everything so well. And when you get there your standards have changed, and you realize how far you still have to go.
