Until now we’ve been going to karate once a week, easing ourselves into it slowly. Last week we took two classes, and this week we’ll be doing the same.

We’ve recently cancelled out gym membership in favour of (a) doing more diverse things and (b) not spending so much on a subscription that we don’t make the most of: admittedly I was going to circuits on average four times a week, but this is still not enough to warrant the cost. I digress; Karate is one of the more diverse things and the extra money allows us to do it more.

This week’s classes we’ve been practicing all the blocks we know so far, and the punches and the kicks, all practiced from a straight stance.

We also practiced 1st kata with several variations: no hands, shouting on every strike, shouting on every block, shouting on everything, and the somewhat different but useful, wibbly wobbly kata, where you slump and wibble through it to cool down, and the more relaxed nature helps improve your stance.

The other thing we seemed to do a lot of was turning through 180 and 90 degrees to the left and right. Cross the back leg over, turn 180, move the back leg in and out at a tangent to it’s original course, turn 90, repeat 4 times and you end up back where you started. Then, change stance, adn do it all in the opposite direction.

One thing we do need to do is 1st kata in reverse. i.e. begin by blocking to the right rather than the left.

Sensei John also told us we coudl go for a grading in 4 weeks. Unfortunately we’re already booked in to the whitfield volleyball tournament so we’ll miss our first opportunity to go for a belt, but this won’t affect our progress so it’s not a problem or a setback, just a delay.

As we exited one of the orange belts commented that our combined Kata is getting really good and a little “frightening”.