October 13, 2007

Balance, Measurement, and Lots of Smiling

Before Big I went to bed tonight, she stood in the living room on one leg, showing me her improved balance. She’s been working on her balance whenever she gets the chance: at the bus stop, while I’m drying her hair, when she’s watching TV. The good thing is that the wobbly pre-schooler who started taking karate a few years ago, the one who couldn’t do a kick without ending up falling on her butt, is starting to really get it.

After she showed me her "amazing balance," her words, not mine, I told her to try a front snap kick. I watched her pull her knee up, extend her foot out with her foot flexed, retract her foot and then set her foot back down. I told her to try a few in a row. She did it. I told her to try it faster and to hold her fists out in front. She did it. She’s really starting to get it.

During class this week, there was a lot of emphasis on basic movements, kicks, blocks, etc. No matter what rank I’ve been, going back to basics has always been an opportunity to pick something back up that may have been lacking in my technique, something that got glossed over. Apparently Big I is having the same revelations.

After she was done showing me her kicks, she wanted to show me her kata. She has the basic pattern down (for the most part). When she was finished, we broke it down into small parts and I helped her with a couple different things. She really listened. She then asked me if I could show her the waza she needs for testing. She never does that. She never asks me to teach her anything when it comes to karate. She’d rather learn it from a 3rd party. She is definitely making progress in more than one department.

She’s not the only one. While Big I was working on the basics of kicking, the brown and black belts were working on kata. I am happy to say that I think I may have the first five or six moves of Chinto. If you know this kata, you know that statement is monumental. In the past, whenever I have been in a class where Chinto is being done, I have been discouraged. In my style, Chinto is needed for Nidan (2nd degree/dan black belt). Along with Chinto is Sanchin. I mean, I might as well just hang up my belt right after Shodan, right?

Not so fast. A couple of our Shodan’s are working on learning Chinto, so the black belt who was teaching today broke it down into smaller parts. There was lots of repetition. Although I used to love to learn advanced kata, I have found that the closer I get to Shodan, the more slippery the kata’s get that I already know, which makes learning a new one a daunting task. If I work on bo and tunfa, then bo and tunfa kata’s feel great. But when I go back to sai, AHHH! I wish I could go to Best Buy and purchase more memory for the brain. It seems impossible to hold it all in there, learn it so I don’t even have to think about it, and then come up with applications for all of it as well. I guess this is why good martial artists know that learning a martial art is not a race; it’s a journey, one that takes a lifetime.

Those couple Chinto moves might disappear over the next few weeks, but it felt really good to actually do a knee kick along with the crowd instead of sort of hopping around and trying to figure out what the heck just happened. In the past, I used to just skip the kick and meet the rest of the crowd after it at some point, usually while shaking my head and laughing at myself. Today, I got it. It’s probably not perfect. It probably needs work (lots and lots of work), but just keeping up was enough for me today.

After that class there was a black belt workout at the dojo. I stayed, along with another brown belt, and we worked out for a good hour and a half using four different weapons and about eight different kata’s. It was about half way through this class, that Hanshi mentioned that he should probably soon measure the brown belts for black belts since it takes a while to get them in (the black belt that I might one day be lucky enough to earn and receive will have my name embroidered on it in Japanese).

He went on to say, and the other yudansha (black belts) backed him up on this, that he likes to have them so that he can bring them out of the office on occasion, just to let the brown belts see it, be around it (like an oasis in the desert, a black belt with my name on it. . . ). Oh sorry, having a little daydream there. Anyway, the fact that I would even be measured sometime soon, and that a belt would be ordered in anticipation of me ME passing my black belt test. . . well, that right there is enough to make a girl smile. . .

a lot

profusely

ad nauseam

I think you get the idea.