Redding Shotokan Karate

Last night, with only 4 of us at practice (in fact, I think perhaps I was the youngest there), we did a lot of jiyu-kumite drills and practice. It was a nice ... vigorous practice session. Hiroko taped an hour of it for future reference. She says that watching yourself, especially if you have "sharp eyes", will help you improve 2 or 3 times faster than without. I don't doubt it - seeing is believing.

One important lesson I learned: There's a great big difference between being able to do 20 strong knuckle pushups and being able to do 40 strong knuckle pushups. I have some work to do. Thanks, Rick.

I also learned something while practicing this morning. Recently I've been experiencing some "tennis elbow" pain in my left elbow. While practicing Tekki Sandan today, I felt a flash of pain as I performed one of the uraken strikes with my left hand. I realized that while I'm working on removing shoulder power, I've been relaxing my arm so that it whips in more of a throwing motion (like throwing a football). What I learned is that while relaxing your shoulders is good, you can't afford to lose the connection and lose control of the motion. I was only controlling the motion at the endpoint, leaving the rest to the initial whipping motion. I'm sure this is what is causing the tennis elbow...

One final note: While writing this item I wanted to link to Rick's blog, but found out that the linking function on this page's editor is broken. Please be patient while I troubleshoot it...