2006 Workout #81: Basics, Kata, and movies…

I was able to put back 15 Sochin tonight before class… I had arrived around 5:55 pm in order to kickstart myself into working out since I was having motivation problems. Kata felt pretty good tonight, I did quite a few of them as “walk in the park” kata, but the ones that I put the mustard on felt solid. I’ve been working on keeping my shoulders down and my butt tucked under me and it seems to help the amount of power generation and stability that I have.

I led warmups tonight, and then Sensei Brewer took us through a nice casual basics workout focusing on lunge punch, front kick, and the deepness of our stances. I will be the first to admit that I need to work on this, for some reason my front stance hasn’t felt low enough in a long time. It may be, but something in the feeling is not there.

We also got a primer on our new ASKA passport books that will be used as an official record of rank, judging certifications, and clinics attended. I purchased mine tonight and will transcribe my belt progression into it from my blog, since I recently updated it. Its a pretty nice record and very well put together, even though I will miss our CISKA workout cards I think that this will be a worthy replacement.

During the second class we got the opportunity to watch a new video that purchased of Sensei Osaka performing Bassai Dai. The video was made in the early 80′s, as evidenced by the background music that was very reminiscent of “Eye of the Tiger” but the technique and the power that Osaka Sensei puts into the kata is nothing short of outstanding.

We finished off the class working on Bassai Dai ourselves for fifteen minutes or so. I really enjoy that kata, unfortunately it has been one of the casualties of the Year of Sochin. I’ve probably done more of Bassai Dai than some of the others, but I have a feeling next year may be a bit of a kata sampler goal like the others are doing this year in order to re-round out some of the neglect. Time will tell on that, but it was nice to get a chance to work on Bassai Dai again.