24 October 09, Training

2009 October 24
by Andy

Toyonaka Dojo, 7-9pm

Group Practice

Attendance

  • yudansha: 11
  • rainbow belts: 3
  • men: 10
  • women: 3
  • children: 1

Warm-Up

  • standard routine
  • unsoku happo x3

Moving Practice

  • jump training from various positions

Individual Practice

  • hokei

Jissen

  • several rounds of 30 second matches with rotating partners

Tenkai

  • Our final practice as a group before the tournament. It went fairly well. We are confident we won’t get the lowest score in the tournament.

18 October 9, Tenkai Practice

2009 October 18
by Andy

Toyonaka dojo, 7-9pm

Tonight we had our first dedicated tenkai practice. It was only the second time we’ve gotten the entire team together at once, and it will probably be the last time.

What we accomplished:

  • Pieced the entire flow together
  • Ironed out the major transitions between sections
  • Ran through the full routine several times at various speeds
  • Managed to run the course in about 32 seconds

What we have yet to accomplish in the next two weeks:

  • Clean up our individual techniques
  • Practice the kills
  • Decide on our entrance and exit

Once we do all that, I’m sure adrenaline will get us under 30s on the day of the tourney. The kills are mostly good, but we need to smooth out the contact. The biggest thing we each need to work on is refining our own techniques and removing any wasteful movements. We’ve been focusing on our kamae and unsoku so far, so extending that to the individual attacks will make for a clean looking tenkai, even if it isn’t especially flashy.

It’s going to be interesting to see how this works out at the all-Japan. We began talking about doing a tenkai as a joke, but ended up deciding to do it. We have no illusions that we might win, but we still want to give a good performance and have some fun with it.

17 October 9, Training

2009 October 17
by Andy

Toyonaka Dojo, 7-9pm

Group Practice

Attentance

  • yudansha: 11
  • rainbow belts: 2
  • men: 12
  • women: 1

Warm-Up

  • standard routine
  • unsoku happo x3

Moving Practice

  • kamae
  • advancing free unsoku with proper kamae
  • retreating free unsoku with proper kamae
  • paired free unsoku with proper kamae
  • free unsoku – one partner attacks with sengi
  • [repeat with un, hen, nen]
  • free unsoku with partners alternating zenten and hienzuki

Jissen

  • several 30 second rounds of unsoku sotai
  • several 1 minute rounds of jissen