2005 Workout #152: On the road…

Today we decided to depart from the standard Saturday regiment and go train in Mackinaw with Sensei Evans. This gave us an opportunity to get together with Sensei Evans and some friends that I’ve not had the chance to see in many years.

We hit basics and sparring pretty hard, which wasn’t a shock providing who we were training with. Sensei Evans is a being constructed from raw power, yet he has remarkable control. I had the good(?) nature to have him bring me out to demo a couple of drills and it is moments like this that remind me that 5.5 years passed away in a vacuum while I was away at college.

Sensei Evans has historically been solid and strong, but nothing has mellowed these past years… it felt at times like I was weighing in versus Zeus himself. He has speed and relaxation coupled with split second timing. His control is quite good, however he does not shy away from giving some surface contact. It was quite interesting to see the contrast of Sensei Hartman and Sensei Evans… both extremely skilled and very knowledgable, however both have strengths that are different yet somehow complementary.

We also had the opportunity to meet/greet some of the Pawnee guys… they are all strong karateka and great people to boot. It turns out that I actually had email correspondance with a few of them while I was away at school… we traded web links to our respective club pages. That kind’ve reinforced how small of a community the karate world can be sometimes.

In all, the training was excellent and the experience was worthwhile. I think we should really make it a point to get over to Mackinaw more often; I have missed hanging in with them.