Redding Shotokan Karate

At Jim Sagawa's practice (both the Friday night before, and the Saturday practice), and at the Sunday practice last week after Daniel Chemla's memorial, Mr. Sagawa had the class practice breathing and stepping in front stance. There's more to it, of course. Jim is doing stuff I can only hope to understand later, but if he thinks it's what we should do, I'm going to do it.

So is Hiroko...so last Saturday and again last night she led us through the stepping/breathing/projecting ki practice. At first, we don't really do a technique; we just focus on the breathing and controlling our body to synchronize (as much as possible) with our breathing.

I surmise it's because we don't breathe this way all the time that it's so hard to breathe and move at the same time, beginning to end.

After a few lengths of the dojo, she had us transfer to doing oizuki without losing the rest of the exercise. The next step was to do kata in this way - slow motion, low low stance, abdominal breathing, and focused ki. We did Taikyoku Shodan, Heian Shodan, Heian Nidan, and Heian Sandan in this manner. By the time we finished, nearly 1-1/2 hours had passed.

Some things I learned:

• It's easy to lose focus. Simplifying the exercise helps contradict this.
• You have to be vigilant against all mistakes. Hiroko noticed my shoulders coming up many times. I noticed my stance weakening sometimes and the pulling leg not working right many times. There are so many places to improve!
• There is easily 3 years' practice this way in every kata (hito kata san nen). Easily.

We finished the night with 2-against-1 jiyu-kumite, slow motion. That is an interesting exercise. Sammy understood the slow motion mentality quickly, and with his explanation I was finally able to see how to do it without trying to speed up. Think honest humility. Don't lie to yourself when doing slow-motion jiyu-kumite.