12 moons

There are 12 major kata in Chito-ryu:

January/Tenshin
February/Seisan
March/Sanchin (Naifaichin)
April/Ro-Hai
May/Ni-Sei-Shi
June/Bassai
July/ Ryusan
August/Shi-Ho-Hai
September/Kusanku
October/Sanshi-ryu
November/Chinto
December/Sochin

The Challenge: 43.50 - 45.00

Lax on logging hours again.  Only myself to blame and only my loss.  Have to consider keeping track of training time and having a weekly post with the hours spent.  Blog entries only for study insights.

Some notes on Kihon Kata San.  I hate this form.  That is the best reason for me to do it.  Made some real progress today.  Vignette 1 is the punch followed by a full spin and punch.  Keep your balance.  Feel the transition point between the delivery and contact and the spin.  Keep your eyes on the opponent to control the spin - rotate the head quickly through the blind spot.  The lead punching hand becomes a deflecting surface, like an uchi uke, when you spin.  The most important thing obviously is to not fall over.  The spin speed is important as is staying low.  But if you have to choose between speed and balance, the priority is clear.

Vignette 2 is a series of uchi-mikazuki-geri-uke.  It is basically a warm up for combining them with mawari-ushiro-geri in vignette 5.  The same side arm and leg should move together making a wall of protection, like the spinning version of the same technique in Chinto.  Mikazuki-geri-uke can defend using the foot or the knee/calf area.  Consider how mikazuki-geri-uke can transition to nagashi-geri-uke for extending the opponent's hikiashi.

Vignette 3 is a stationary shuto followed by a step to shuto and a nukite.  I have always despised this sequence until today.  The reason I always despised it was simple: who would ever let you do this flurry?  It seemed pointless.  But it just needed a little perspective added in.  Obviously if it is to be employed it has to consider the opponent's lead hand.  The secret is in how you use your hikite as you advance.  Whether you move left or right of the lead hand, it creates a bridging structure just like gunting in hubud or straight-blast in wing chun.  As you advance, hikite of the first shuto obviously won't come back to the hip in the kata.  This is what kept tripping me up.  It will clear the lead hand in an osae, soto or gedan barai motion opening center line for an oi-atemi (in this case, shuto).  Your new lead hand, again, doesn't retract to the hip.  It again - traps - the opponent's lead hand crossing over your body to apply osae in time with another oi-atemi (in this case, nukite).  That last sequence of shuto-gedan followed by osae-nukite is precisely the same sequence in motion as the stationary sequence in Bassai.  It is a clear example of how hikite to the hip in kihon causes us to miss the obvious things that we should do in combat.  As the wise man said, do kata precisely but combat is another matter.

Vignette 4 is naiwan-uke to sukui-uke followed by a morote grab, knee and tai-otoshi in a half turn.  It is seen in other places in Chito-Ryu.  The naiwan-sukui is the point of interest here and should be examined more especially in combination with gyaku-shuto.

Vignette 5 is the mikazuki-geri-uke followed by mawari-ushiro-geri.  As the block ends, I feel that you should land in musubi-dachi.  Also consider for the kick that if the range has broken down, the kick will have to be delivered low or in a sweep motion.

Vignette 6 also gave me fits for a long time.  My eyes are open.  Again the missing piece was the lead hand.  Shuto kamae must clear the opponent's lead hand prior to the first step.  Basically you reach out and grab  step into range and control the lead arm with your kamae before stepping.  You combine the pulling action with the push off from the step to double the power of the oi-shuto. Without the action of the lead hand to create kuzushi, your step and shuto merely opens your centerline.  He'll just hit you.  Only when mae-te clears the opponent's mae-te does the motion make sense.  You pull him down and step to shuto followed by a spin in shikaku - the blindspot position.  The spin ends in this case with a shuto, but the atemi could be an empi or a spinning sweep.

Amazing what an hour and a half can give.  This is the difference between practice and study.  A gift to last a lifetime.

The Challenge: 41.50 - 43.50

30 minutes makiwara, 1 hr Sanchin and 30 minutes Tenshin.  Ni-Sei-Shi is important training for resistance, sensitivity and uke-waza.  The most important aspects are 1) whole body movement - using your stance and hips to strengthen your motion, 2) kakiwake-uke as a transition to soto-uke, kosa-uke, uchi-uke, and 3) controlling centerline and transitioning from defense to offense.  Morote-tsuki and kakiwake-uke are two-sides of the same coin.  The bunkai for Ni-Sei-Shi should be against the lapel grab of morote.  You must develop the sensitivity and ryote ability to the approaching fist.  Keep your elbows in for both morote and kakiwake.  The two techniques should feel the same.  Kakiwake should enter into ma before the elbows return.  Morote should rotate at the last moment.  Practice each like it can turn into the other.

The Challenge: 39.50 - 41.50

30 minutes of sanchin, 30 minutes of sabaki, 1 hour of tenshin

The rotation in tenshin from sanchin or seisan dachi can be broken down into two motions: as the hips turn it becomes neko ashi dachi then you swing the leg behind to a kosa dachi before completing the rotation.  In sanchin dachi it is important not to raise your tanden.  In seisan dachi it is helpful to think of the kosa motion as a rotating trip to the opponent's leg.  That feeling of attacking will give the motion the urgency necessary to complete the turn.

Did I ever notice that sabaki 5 is the same motion as the shuto-haishu kamae in ni-sei-shi?  Sabaki 5 needn't attack only to the side or from a rotation.  There is so much to learn even from the things that I think that I understand.  Truly, Budo is depthless.

The Challenge: 38.00 - 39.50

30 minutes sabaki, 30 minutes makiwara and 30 minutes ude gitae.  It occurs to me that just as fin-di in the shuri-te hooks and pulls (and twists) and in the naha-te it pushes and traps (and twists), uke-waza must boil down to sensitivity.  We need a lot of drills to build the feeling of when to push and when to pull - when to stand and when to move.  When the strike is intercepted close to the wrist on the blocking forearm the hand should come into play, controlling the strike at the attacker's wrist through small circles of the your own wrist.  But when a strike is deflected by the forearm in the vicinity of the elbow, it is more natural to control the action with a small circle of the shoulder and elbow, to lay atop the striking weapon and move to control the opponent's elbow.  However either elbow or wrist interceptions can change to either pulling or pushing fin-di.

This is partly why it is so important to see a block not as a lateral movement but as a forward interception with internal rotations.  Both your arm and the opponent's arm must enter into ma-ai - one is directed at kyusho along a straight trajectory and the other intercepts that vector by entering ma and creating a small arc to which the attack will be tangent.  But these arcs must be as small and subtle as possible to allow muchimi (stickiness to your opponent) and to prevent reversals by the opponent.

In this way although ikken hissatsu differentiates karate from gung fu and kempo, muchimi is the dimension of  tanshu tantai in karate (searching for the hands and feet).

Remember to incorporate nage-no-kata 1 into practice for Sabaki 2.

Head of the Class

My first students are named BD, Kevin, Hennoch, Adam, Zack, and Habib.  They are so young, so young in fact that I can't believe that I was ever so...carefree.  They aren't carefree of course, they just sell it very, very well.  They seem to have so much life in them that they can't sit still.  I don't know how far in karate they will go, but I hope that I can give each of them something they can keep.

Learning, studying and practicing.  Kihon, Kata, Kumite.  China, Okinawa, Japan.  Shin Gi Tai.  I'm beginning to see how important it is to have simple lesson plans, to build a broad base of development.  You have to hope that something you practise causes a glimmer within - something that they do makes them want to do more.

What a responsibility it is standing at the head of the class.  Having them bow to you.  I don't know if I'm really ready but at least I'm eager.  Hopefully I can make them eager as well.

The Challenge: 35.50 - 38.00

Been reading this book on Heart rate training and I've started jogging again with purpose.  It spells out specific heart ranges for specific adaptations and since I'm an utter novice, I can feel comfortable simply being a white-belt, that is, running to build my endurance.  So I've been going on a couple of hour long jogs at a very easy pace.

I've had a lot of time reading and studying physiology and exercise and I guess I have for a long time known that your heart rate is elevated for hours after you finish a strenuous bout of exercise.  But I don't think it ever occurred to me why that was.  It was only in this book that it spelled out the obvious: the metabolic demands for recuperation following tissue breakdown brought on by strenuous work sends messages to your heart to increase its resting rate to facilitate the recovery.  Thus your heart rate is an impartial and accurate measure of whether you have fully recovered from your previous stress.

I've been measuring my heart rates in the morning and without fail, my resting heart rate in the morning is around 70 beats.  But measure it the day after a jog and it's up to 78.  A day later, it's back down to 70.  Like clockwork.

I can't believe I never knew this.  How many times did I wonder whether I was going too hard or too soft?  And my heart was telling me the whole time.

"My heart skips a beat"

I was dead tired after that first run and I was taking my pulse to get a sense of where my heart was at.  I was lying down panting and the rhythm was...troublesome.  It wasn't even.  It would beat three times in sequence, then take a beat off, then repeat the three beats.  I thought for a second that I was having an arrhythmia.  I sat up and took it again.  This time, it was five beats on, one off, five beats on.  Then I stood.  It was beating uninterruptedly.

I shook my head.  Depending on whether I was standing, sitting or supine, the signals from my baro-receptors (blood pressure sensors) were changing the beat to compensate for the higher or lower blood pressure.  Though the rate of beating seemed to be determined by my oxygen debt and fatigue, the rhythm was being altered to balance out the pressure that my system needed.  So even though the frequency of beats stayed the same, an off-beat was inserted every 3 beats when lying down and every 5 beats when sitting to adjust my heart's output to my body's demand taking into account the effects of gravity.

I feel like I have this magical clock beating inside of me all this time and I didn't even realize it.  Maybe I should see what it can really do!