The Challenge: 21.00-21.50

I'm reporting half an hour this morning when I really should report more due to all the time I haven't reported in the past month.  Taking another month off karate :-( And I made a shocking revelation...

I've been reading this book - The Power of Habit by Charles Duhig.  A lot of the book is stuff I knew intuitively and through school - the vast majority of the surface activities that people do are habits of one form or another. We generally give a lot of praise and blame to people for actions and decisions that weren't the product of conscious, deliberative thought.  Most of what we do is conditioning based on certain stimuli and with an intended outcome.

If I can be said to have a habit, my one habit is to consciously intellectualize the world around me.  When someone yells at me, I don't get defensive.  The first thing through my head is: why are they really yelling?  What is the context, the subtext?  Someone else's habit might be to retaliate, or get defensive.  Mine is to think, even when the most prudent thing would be to act.

Because my one habit is to over-analyse, I have a very difficult time maintaining actual habits.  Whereas someone else might be met with a stimulus - a commercial break during a television show - and condition themselves to do something - do 10 pushups - my inexorable mind is always questioning my responses.  Shouldn't I do different pushups?  How many would be best?  Maybe I should do some situps?  After a while of this endless self-questioning, the fledgling habit usual falls by the wayside.

My work ethic has always been one about results rather than routine.  Throughout school, I've always had an ability to get to the destination, but never with a consistent method of getting there.  If I studied at one library on a certain day for test A, I could never repeat the pattern for test B.  My restless mind would wander about looking for some structure to my efforts before settling on one and making the most of it before the deadline.

Real life however, has no deadlines.  There is no set date by which you should be financially secure, act responsibly, be a good person, a good father.  Without deadlines, my restless meandering has devolved into full-blown aimless wandering.

In the book, Duhigg discusses this notion of a 'keystone habit'.  I prefer 'rosetta stone' so that's what I'll be using.  The idea is that certain habits have such a profound effect on a person or entity that any committment to the habit would necessitate committed execution of other satellite habits.  Without doing these satellite habits the rosetta stone habit could not be done.  And I think I've found mine.

I think my Rosetta stone habit is reporting.  If I could actually come to expect the act of chronicling what I do, and eventually come to like the act of writing down what I do, it would become more urgent for me to do what I know that I should.  The consistent need to do one act - logging my actions - would lead to a persistent need to do the things that need logging.

I have to start building the writing habit, both for myself and for publication.  I have to feel strange not writing something down.  And then, when writing, I'll feel strange not having done something worth writing.  And that strange feeling, the longing, the expectation of something absent - is what I need the most.

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Notes from Seisan:  There is a tension generated from the rear leg front kick that can be used to power the Gyaku-zuki from the hiki-ashi.  The feeling is one of a rooted Superman punch.  In the superman punch, you punch as the same side leg kicks back.  Shifting your pelvis forward during a rear leg mae geri creates a left right tension in the body, a coiled feeling.  You simply release the coil by pulling back the leg and driving the punch as the heel plant.  It also feels a little like Ouchi-gari.

Training notes: practice uke against a post.  It allows you to develop the blocks in association with sabaki and stances.  It is important to feel resistance against the forearm on the target zones, to feel where the lines intersect, where tangents are made between lines and curves of force.  Stay close to the post, stay as close as possible.  Push-up/fall-down against the post when doing age-uke, toboku ho, fall against the weight.  When doing jodan-age uke, you should feel yourself pushing up against an arm as you fall into your opponent - falling and rising at the same time.

Toboku-ho: a side kick to the back of the leg should be a strike in training.  In reality, it should be an unstable movement, falling into the joint.

Body 3: Weak links

My hamstrings my lower back and my triceps.  By definition my posterior chain.  And I only just realized, that my posture is suspect because of it.  My tanden points downward and my center of balance is back towards my heels.  But when I engage my glutes, lower back, hams and calves, I can feel my COB move directly over my feet - it takes a lot of effort to get it there. I need to implement an aggressive scheme of posterior chain work.  For my bodywork over the next 6 weeks I'm going to focus only on the following exercises:

1. lunges  2.  handstands    3. pistols   4. wall sit  5. pull ups   6. rows   7. dips  8.  pushups.  9. support position  10. leg lifts  11. supermans  12. l-sit   13. oblique crunches   14. lat. leg lifts  15. pelvic lifts

Been away.

The challenge hasn't gone fallow, I just haven't been recording it. I've probably added 20 hours since my last post but I've been devoting all my powers to making a greater daily commitment.  Also I've had some lingering injuries that have been bothering me.  It is important to manage these things by taking the necessary time to recover. As much as we might like to think, working through pain is only for combat. I'll start recording again today.

The Challenge:19.50-21.00

Has my shugyo begun? The main problem that I can see is that I always love practicing. That's why it's so difficult to understand why I don't do it more often, more regularly.

Jog, followed by Seisan. N.B. Thumb on tekubi kake uke, relax after impact, breath, block offensively, keep your head up for other attackers, good shime before kicks.

Soto uke is a winning technique.

The Challenge: 18.00-19.50

The BC gang were here again. Great people. I didn't go backwards as much against Eric as I did last time but I still couldn't get my hips to where they needed to be to change the embusen consistently. It always felt like I just couldn't trust myself to move when he committed so I was fidgeting instead of moving decisively and explosively. Which is particularly strange cause he was really tired and all those muscles he has make it really hard to conceal his initiative. I had the time but I didn't trust myself.

It is sooooo slippery, isn't it? Zaha says you have to build enlightenment upon enlightenment. They are few and far between. I had only one real moment of insight. One moment when I was across from James that I was calm enough, sure enough, to actually look at him. I was looking at his eyes and...And for a brief moment, the briefest of moments, I looked into his heart.

I could see his wariness, his deliberation. A flicker of inner light, a spark and my body moved on it's own. My glove touched his nose.

Objectively I know I reacted to a flinch of his eyes or something. But it was more than just that. His whole body changed, the temperature in the room changed. I knew he was coming and I intercepted him just as his body began to obey his mind.

For one moment in 20 hours of training, I entered a green belt with 20 years less training than me. Kenji Ushiro does it every time he stands before some one, regardless of who they
are, how big they are, how good they are.

And I want to feel it again. But it's sooooo slippery.

Technique 3: empty hand, open mind.

Don't be predictable. If you aren't going to try new things in class, where will you? Certain things we should attempt and try to accomplish against every opponent.  Most require control of ma and embusen. They include...
1) foot sweep off balance (crescent step)/deep enter to hip throw/choke
2) gentle yoko to kidney or knee/neko front kick to head (feint) torso/roundhouse to head (feint) rib/kidney
3) muay thai push kick/oblique kick/morote push off balance
4) pull punch off balance/juji uke + yoko empi/kage zuki
5) uchi uke (breathe out) + Tai Sabaki + empi/knee
6) soto uke (breathe in) to arm pin/clinch/pull punch off balance
7) jodan uke (breathe in) + push up off balance/shiko zuki to hip throw
8) gedan barai (in or out) to oshi zuki/to uchi uke/sukui uke (catch kick)/naiwan to uraken
9) tora kuchi (Seisan, Bassai, Rohai)
10) shiko zuki
11) oi zuki
12) cross step kosa dachi sabaki mawari uchi
13) kick the punch, punch the kick

The Challenge: 15.00-18.00

Incredible day, incredible class.  Learned a lot.  First thing I learned is, my endurance is very bad for a 30 year old. I'm getting impatient with myself and these half measures.

The second thing I learned was, I still feel the urge to move backward. It's easy to fight people smaller and slower than you and invite then in and enter them. But Sensei invited these three students from BC to train. Salt of the earth - the lady was a Kindergarten teacher! The one guy, Eric, was big. Big and intense. And when he came, I could feel my spirit retreat. I couldn't enter. I was afraid. I'm not even close to solving the riddle...

The third thing I learned was how important it was to be able to roll. I sometimes feel that tinge of resentment at how happy people feel throwing me and watching me roll safely away when I absolutely can't do the same to them. But it is so essential for people to feel technique work, see it work. That's really important. That is the spark, the seed that encourages the hard work of cultivation. If I can be that seed, I will. I'll learn by watching and teaching:-)

And the final thing I learned was how blessed I was when one of the finest martial teachers in the world moved into my neighborhood. My sensei is a good and beautiful man. Kind and giving. A man of depthless ability. He thanked me for staying behind and working with the visiting students, and drove me home. We joked and talked and I suggested that we record him doing the Bunkai. He shrugged almost as if to say that no one would be interested in that. But I saw the look on the visitors faces as he moved and taught them. It was the same look I held on my face, the same look that I always have in those moments when I realize how easy it would have been never to have met him. It was awe. It was seeing the mountain top, the place where karate can take us. It was seeing how beautiful karate can be, how simple karate wants to be, how complicated we all make it.

We were working on hen shu ho and he was giving us pointers. It's so strange the dichotomy between Kata and Bunkai. You might do all sorts of things in Kata that you don't understand, but the Bunkai makes immediate sense even if you can't execute it at all. Sensei did a million little things that turned a good movement into a flawless one, a movement with no openings. He does something that makes so much sense, that you wonder why you couldn't have figured it out yourself. You scratch your head trying to figure out how he did what he did and he smiles and does it again. There are so few people in the world who fill me with wonder, and I see one of them three times a week.

Three hours that felt like thirty minutes. So much to learn. We need to record Sensei. His understanding is too valuable to be stored in just one place.