2005 Workout #147: The Conversationalist…

Tonight’s workout was spearheaded by Oedewaldt. I led warmups, nothing spectacular. We went through the basics rubrick, Kevin had all the black belts circulate in order to make corrections but I got a little bit of basics in during that class. We broke into groups for kata… I got Jerry-san, Cunningham-san, and Kasey-san. Two red belts and a green belt… made counting through kata a little difficult, but they were all doing a great job. They asked several good questions, but I kept the lecturing to a minimum and had to resort to having them alternate doing their katas so they could rest a little.

Garls and I erupted into an impromptu sparring match in between classes. It was slow sparring, but fun nonetheless… and it carried the noteable benefit of keeping away from The Conversationalist. I was ready to continue sparring, but we got sidetracked… Kevin had each of the black belts select a black belt kata and go through it with the class twice during the second class. It was fun… the rundown went as such: Oedewaldt => Gankaku, Me => Empi, Dukes => Bassai Dai, and Garls => Hangetsu. Twice through that and we got to do some 3-5 time attack.

This was followed up by some slow sparring… when I got across from Kevin, he insisted on punching my shin in lieu of any actual blocking. After about three times of this, I requested him to stop punching my leg, at which time he swore he wasn’t doing anything of the sort. Then he wanted to argue with me that this was a valid tactic. Sensing a speech, I redoubled my efforts not to care and ended up scoring a few solid hits, accidentally knocking Kevin Senior into the scenery that lines the far wall of the dojo. I was very sorry about that.

Later, I ended up across from Dobbleaire-san. That guy is pretty tricky… hes got a lot of strong techniques and speed.

In all it was a nice workout. It was a bit dull making corrections during most of the first class, however the kata in the second class and the entertaining sparring more than made up for it.