2006 Workout #87: Four short of a load…

Tonight my goal was to cross 1100 Sochin, and I fell a little short. Before class I got to 10 kata, and I decided I wanted to at least get 15 so I used warmups to try to get there. Mike-san joined me, and I ended up making it to only 18 Sochin. Our kata-streak was broken by Sensei Hartman summoning us to the dojo to “join in the fun.”

The “fun” was stance training, specifically nekoachi-dachi (cat stance) and some of the other often maligned stances. The exercise was to get in stance. And hold it while Sensei ran around and tested everyone with punches in the stomach, round kicks to the inside and outside of the thighs, and various other forms of help. We did a few moving basics in Sochin-dachi (which wasn’t bad), and then had a quick break (less than five minutes) before a class of sparring. By the end of the first class, my legs were locking up, so much that I couldn’t move naturally during the first few sparring drills that we did. It was like my legs could bend two or three inches and then could not go up or down any more. Luckily, that worked out after the first few minutes of the second class.

We did one time, three to five time, and slow sparring with all of the lower ranks in the class. I had some really good go-arounds with and , the latter of which zoomed a punch right into my cheek at a fairly good clip. She apologized as if she had done something wrong, but she hadn’t. She did something good.

It was up to us black belts to control the pacing and speed of the slow sparring, and I feel like I’m able to do that a little better now because of the center training that comes along with Sochin kata. I’m not great at it by any stretch of the imagination, but I’m better than I was for sure.