Seven steps » sparring

Another awesome training evening

Trevoke — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 03:59:06 +0000

So tonight, I went to train 35 minutes away from home, at the dojo where my sensei’s sensei teaches. Warmups / stretches, kicking drills, calisthenics, sparring, then fighting drills.
Sensei’s sensei has a son who is now 48. Now — I am fast by normal people’s standards. This guy is really fast by my standards. He also has a really positive energy – very friendly eyes, a great disposition.. And he can dislocate your jaw before you can blink or think “oh sh..!”, so don’t piss him off.
Anyway, as much as shihan (sensei’s sensei) is amazing, tall, skilled, talented, dedicated to his art, as much his son inherited many of the traits, has been training under his dad a long time, and has learned a lot from a ton of sparring and tournaments and just .. being there.
So now he imparts his wisdom and skills, and it’s WONDERFUL to watch him in action, and learn from him, and listen to his way of explaining things. Just like in Dune, “A process cannot be understood by stopping it”, he explains action and reaction within the context of a moving match, which is AWESOME.

I breathe hard when I’m in this class. It’s a bit of a work-out, and excellent cardio.
Oh ! So shihan’s son hit me twice, and I managed to shift out of the way of the third strike, like I felt his movement and reacted. It was sweet. Now I only need to make that happen ALL THE TIME.

Who follows who?

Trevoke — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 01:36:29 +0000

In the past couple of weeks, I’d gotten to spar progressively harder with a blue belt who is twice my age, but has been in dojos where sparring and self-defense were more important than kata. As a result, I consider him somewhat dangerous to spar with.. And, well, I let myself get caught up. I stopped being the watcher..
I hid behind the excuse that I was just sparring as hard as he wanted to spar, and so it just escalated.
Yesterday I took a different approach; I resolved to work on what I wanted to work, which turns out to be distance/range evaluation and shifting.. And I sparred at half-speed. He followed my speed, only speeding up a little as he got into it. I did not.
I asked him after sparring what he thought of the first minute or so of sparring with me, and he said he didn’t remember much.. But it enlightened me to hear “At first, I always take a few seconds to see if we’re going hard or soft, and then I get going”.
Here I was, thinking I was following him, and here he was, thinking he was following me! It sure is a good thing I took a step back from the vicious cycle.

More stances and some testing

Trevoke — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 04:52:18 +0000

So, I’ve been trying to keep my stances down a lot more now – it’s making me much more aware of when I get tense.. Because I rise, because my ankles, hips and knees just don’t flex. It’s an interesting experience.
Two people are testing.. During sparring, that evening was the first time that I made a conscious point of “the first thing I do is move – and then answer”. I’m feeling good about this change, in addition to keeping slightly lower stances during sparring – mobility much increased and there is a lot more potential there.
Something to work on…