November 8, 2006

Nunchaku Conquered

It felt almost ceremonial tonight when I arrived at the dojo. There was a brief moment of hesitation, a deep breath, and then I reached into my karate bag, pulled out the foam nunchaku that I’ve been borrowing from my instructor, and with only a bit of reluctance handed them back to my instructor. I’ve graduated to wood.

Last week, I decided that it was time. Concussion, bloody nose, bruised face, back, whatever. . . it was time. So with no one as a witness, I gave Odo No Nunchaku a whirl with my wooden nunchaku and the whirl worked. I went through the kata slowly, making sure I had each transition right or at least slow enough that if I messed it up, I wouldn’t be paying for it. And I did it.

I was even able to make the little whooshing noises that the black belts make when swinging their nunchaku through the air. It felt really good.

I figured that I might as well start working with the wooden nunchaku now. I need to get used to them. I needed to step up to the challenge. If green belts can use wooden nunchaku, then so can I.

Although my advanced class has been rather crowded as of late, tonight it was only me. We ran through the nunchaku kata several times, and then we moved on to my insane bo kata, Chounokun.

Just like with the nunchaku kata, my instructor broke the kata up into somewhat manageable parts and just drilled it into my brain. I know I probably won’t retain it all until next week, but enough of it is in there that it will come back without too much trouble.

Three difficult kata’s to learn for 2nd kyu. . . three kata’s down. It feels really good.