Incredibly busy as usual
By joe
- 2 minutes read - 389 wordsI have lots of drafts in queue, just not enough time to finish them. I’ll make a concerted effort this weekend. As an update to a previous post, I managed not to collapse during my brown belt test (had some respiratory issue going on … allergies, or a cold, or something). The kata were not “hard”, but they expect different things from you at higher rankings. You can’t go blasting through the kata like a robot (as I probably did with my first one). You need to show “intent”, focus, power, speed where needed. Intent means your punches and kicks have to be believable … as in you have an opponent that you are fighting with, and the kick, or punch, needs to be something you would actually throw. Part of this is thinking about what you are doing as you do it. Seeing the kata in 4 dimensions. Understanding what each bit does (and I still don’t have all the complete understanding of the pieces of the preceding ones). But doing this, you get a sense for the patterns, the flow, where power and speed make sense, where and how flow should work. There is still a great deal of body mechanical bits I haven’t fully internalized, but I am getting the underlying theory (or at least an understanding of the black box I am being presented). And yes, I did get promoted (woot!). 3 more kata (could be 4, I have to check to be absolutely clear, as the last one might be for the black belt test). Still a huge amount to learn, and I am getting some of the underlying theory (or at least piecing it together). It helps that I’ve got good (and patient) teachers. This said, I have a tournament on Saturday. Last tournament I did ok at, though I did not spar (kumite). I will this time. I am looking forward to it. So if I show up in NY at the HPC Linux on Wall street conference with a broken nose, and facial bruises … you know why! Since we have a booth there, I hope I don’t have to deal with this, but if I do, I’ll need a creative way of discussing. “Yeah, I got into an … er … active … support call … yeah, thats the ticket!”