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Last night we went to our second Friday night class. As newbies to the group it was cool that Sensai John chose Rich to take the warmup, this time with no warning at all. Rich did a sterling job, although did threaten to lapse into boxercise warm up at one time, and backed out of what could have been an epic ‘heads, shoulders, knees and toes’ warm up finale.

Sensai John has us pegged as instructors of the future, and so is letting us get some practise in front of the group by taking the warm up. He has invited us to the Instructors class on Sundays once we have our yellow belts. This makes the fact we are going to miss the grading because of the Whitefield volleyball tournament very annoying, and a potential business trip may scupper my chances of getting to the next grading; but, all in good time.

The Friday night session has fewer white belts and more coloured belts in attendance, and this week we got to do some funky new intermediate level blocks (Mawashi Uke and Chuge Uke) usually restricted to those who have already got their yellow belts. We also did some more combination work too, for example a head block, followed by a stomach level punch, and then an inside hooking block. We did various mixtures of blocks and attacks using the same arm, including head level block followed by foward sweeping block which involves a lot of thought in the transistion

Whilst we were doing this the higher grades were sparring. We watched a green and orange belt for a time, and I realised that my current concern that I’m not doing enough CV exercise is soon going to be allayed once I have my yellow belt and start sparring. It looks both physically and mentally challenging. Physically because the amount of movement - you have to be very light on your toes or your opponent is going to going to get you. And mentally challenging as you have to constantly read your opponent so you can block their attacks, and when you attack yourself you have to maintain control, and attack without contact. As Sensai John said last night, it’s easy to go and lay into someone, but far more difficult to throw a punch and stop 2 inches from them.

Sensai John also asked how our legs were doing. I’m certainly feeling and seeing the benefit (which is a most pleasant, welcomed consequence, in a relatively short space of time). However this is not just an aesthetic difference, last night my kicks certainly felt much more controlled and stable than normal so I can see improvement there too (although I think some of this was due to Tony’s consideration when taking the mixed group through the kicks). I hope this has a knock on effect on my volleyball too…