Karate Belt Promotion

So the belt promotion has come and gone. It didn't happen without incident, though. The ceremony was held at a dance studio with somewhat dusty floors. During the Saratoga Springs S.T.O.R.M. and S.W.A.T. demonstration, my instructor had a move where he runs to the front with his katana and slices down in mid-air while he comes to a stop. Due to the dusty floors, he didn't exactly come to a complete stop like he was planning and instead, almost did the splits. He recovered ok, so it almost looked like it was on purpose. The rest of the demonstration went well and I didn't notice any other slips.

The next incident happened when the juniors, teens, and adults were doing some kicks on the kicking paddles and the guy in front of me kicked a little too hard when doing a hatchet kick (a forward kick downward with the target of the face). His foot slipped out from under him and he hit the ground pretty hard. Becky then was doing a roundhouse kick and kicked higher than the floor wanted to let her and as a result ended up flat on her front before she realized what had happened. She ended up with a good sized bruise on her chin and left knee as well as her big toe on her left foot. She says she fighting the kicking paddle and the floor snuck up on her and beat her up.

Now that we have our yellow belts, we are now learning a new Kata called Heian Shodan. It's somewhat similar to Taikyoku Shodan, but adds some blocks and the Black Belt stance. The way we are learning it is slightly different again from how I have seen it on YouTube videos. The only real difference is that on the videos a certain move is performed once whereas Bobby Lawrence Karate curiculum has the move twice, once on each direction at the beginning. One of these days I will write out the steps as I am learning them, but I don't have the time to right now. Anyway, I should get back to work.

Yellow Belt Promotion

After about a month of jumping, kicking, kata, and self-defense techniques, Becky and I are ready to receive our yellow belts. The belt promotion ceremony will be held at 5:00 p.m. on Friday, October 24th, at the Apollo Dance and Recreation Center located at 50 Church St. #E in American Fork.

The katas that we need to have learned are Taikyoku Shodan, Taikyoku Nidan, and Taikyoku Sandan. We also need to be able to perform several self-defense techniques such as Repeating Wings, Wild Crushing Hammer, Halting Ram, Halting Mace, Circling Wings, and Reverse Circling Wings. I'm not sure what kicks we might be asked to do, but we have learned some pretty fun combinations.

This has been great exercise for me, and something I've kind of wanted to do since I was little, so it's nice to be advancing and feeling like the hard work and practice is paying off.

More Karate

Well, here I am again, blogging from my phone. I like the idea of this program I'm using, but it has some design issues and I can't upload images with it for some reason. I think I'm going to rewrite it with a more flexible design and then make it available on Code Project or something.

Anyway, I wanted to write again about my Karate experiences. I am starting school at Webwe State now and have classes on Monday and Wednesday nights. As such, I am unable to attend the Adult/Teen karate classes that are also on Monday and Wednesdays. JD, the branch manager at the karate studio, has been good enough to switch my 45 minute classes for some 30 minute private lessons on the nights I don't have school. The shortage of 15 minutes balances out with the benefit of the 1-on-1 attention, so it works out geat for me.

I have been very interested in learning all I can about the kata (forms) that I need to learn to achieve my yellow belt, so I have been surfing the web trying to take in as much information as I can. I talked with JD about some of the differences I have read about compared to what he has been teaching me. So far the only major difference is that in the traditional Shotokan version of the Taikyoku Shodan, you take three step punches down the center of the I shape (I'll explain the whole kata in a later post), whereas in the Bobby Lawrence curriculum you only do one step, making the I a little squished. From what he has mentioned about Taikyoku Nidan, however, I think there is a little bigger difference. Each studio has their own styles and teaches their own variaton of the katas, so I'm not worried about being taught something wrong. I just want to know what I need to in order to progress to the next belt. The main purpose of the kata is to master certain stances and formations that will end up helping you learn the self-defence moves.

Karate

So becky and I have signed up for Karate at the Bobby Lawrence Karate studio in Saratoga Springs. We are learning our first kata form and some fun kicks and basic self-defense moves.

The first kata that we are learning is called Taikyoku Shodan. We have been learning the moves very slowly, which is good to start with, but I have gotten impatient after mastering the first 3 directions of the 7 total directions. I started googling for instructions on how to do all of the remaining directions and found someone's personal site that had good, step-by-step instructions on how to do the full kata. Unfortunately he got his east and west mixed up while explaining the first move, but it still helped me be able to move on in my mastery of the kata.

I am blogging from my phone right now, so I will have to post the instructions (with the east and west fixed) later.

Welcome

Welcome everyone to my blog.

This is where you can come to see what is happening with my family. I hope to keep this up-to-date better than my website. I mainly use the website for programming tests, since the bogging software i tried to use isn't exactly user friendly.

Anyway, I will try to find out how to give the rest of the family access to create posts and add pictures.