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Friday, 17 July 2009

I'm Baaaaack

So its been like 6 months since I've posted, and I happened to come across my old high school entries, and man are they funny. I was so spirited about everything! I don't know if I still am, freshman year of college kind of crushed my soul.

Anyway, I have decided that I will resume writing in this blog. Not just about karate, but a chronicle of my daily events like it was before. I like going back and reading them.

In regards to the last post, I did not pass the prelim, so I'm taking it again at camp this summer (which is a little more than two weeks away EGADS). My daily schedule this summer is work 9-5, bike home, snarf food, off to karate around 7, 7:30 usually, back home usually between 10-10:30. Then its ice cream and The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, and I usually fall asleep in my gi pants on the couch 3/4 of the way through The Colbert Report.

I'm excited for tomorrow because my friend Natalia from karate is having a pool party, and she is Russian and an absolute riot. Its funny, but so many of my friends are adults now, not just late 20s early 30s adults, but legit my parents age adults. Its because that's who I do karate with. The "adult" class is 13 and up. But yeah, the party tomorrow is gonna be fun. Ken is supposed to be coming up (my first karate instructor EVER who moved away to North Carolina) and I'm baking brownies and bringing fireworks.

Saturday, 31 January 2009

Prelim

The prelim is today.

I am oddly calm. More calm than I thought I would be last week. I got my last signature from my advocate last night, and we also came to the conclusion that I should use the 5ft bo. He made the point that if I do bo form 2 well the panel should think "That bo looks too light," not "She's using a 5ft bo and it still looks slow."

But tonight, I'm not going to worry. I'm just going to go up and do some karate. That's all I can do now. There's no time to fix anything else or try and do a technique differently. Jake told me last night, "You know what to do. Now do it."

And that's all I can do.

Saturday, 17 January 2009

Bad night.

Last night at workout I felt like a total failure. We were working on four corner jujitsu stuff, and I felt like I'd kjust totally forgotten how to do jujitsu! Techniques that I used to be good at, armbar and shihonage, now seem complicated and impossible to do correctly. The first time my advocate saw me do shihonage, he said it was one of the most technically perfectly executed shihonage's he's seen. Now, it doesn't work for beans.

Also, I do not have the required signatures on my paperwork. I don't know how I let this happen. Two weeks before the prelim, my jujitsu is off, and I don't have my signatures. I only have one. I need three.

Not only this, but I just bought a 6ft bo staff because even though I'm shorter than my 5ft one, my instructor said I need a 6ft one. Balls. I'm bad at shushi no kan sho (bo form 2) anyway, and now I have to figure it out with a much bigger staff.

I feel like I seriously suck at karate right now. This blows.

Sunday, 21 December 2008

Papers?

So I finally got papers last Friday from my advocate, and it was totally unexpected. I basically tackled Jake (my advocate) when he gave them to me. And then I started crying in the car ride back (somebody else was driving).

It was good to finally get my papers, but it was the weekend before finals week. So extremely happy about one thing + very stressed about another = a very odd emotional state. And I'm actually a bit stressed about karate now too, because the first two texts I got after I sent out a mass text saying that I got papers were both along the lines of "Congratulations! Now the real work begins."   And its true.

   Last night at workout I worked on just two onesteps with Jake for about half an hour. Really simple techniques, and it just wasn't working the way it should've. First, I couldn't get shihonage to work properly because I wasn't twisting the wrist far enough so his elbow wasn't turning up so I kept trying to lift his wrist or duck around it to get him over. Its a really simple and pretty technique though-left parry block, right round kick to the head, grab the wrist and step through to shihonage.
   The next one that we worked on for a while was a simple back pull down. Left outside-in block, right elbow to ribs, come around, back pulldown. For a while we just worked on the leadup, and I was having a hard time first swinging the elbow with enough power to penetrate, (as a drill Jake actually made me hit him with hit a few times,) and the next harder part was swinging it with that much power and not making contact.   It took me a while to realize how easily the pulldown works. Just pull...straight down. And Jake goes WHOMP and hits the ground. I always get surprised when techniques work easily.   But then again, that's the point of jujitsu.

Fighting I did not fare well last night. Jake kept telling me to throw my reverse punch every time Alex flinched, but I was like "What's the point?! My reverse punch won't reach, and Alex is just going to kick me!" After I squared my stance, the fight went a little better, but I still felt soooo subpar about my fighting.    Man, I used to be a good fighter before I was a candidate...

So this break, all I'm doing is hitting up the gym and doing karate. I have nothing else to do, and no plans to do anything else. The prelim is January 30th. Lets get it crackin.

Monday, 08 December 2008

Intramural Tournament

I did not do as well as I had hoped. Not only did I not place in any category I competed in (forms, fighting, and onestep) my score on my form was abysmal. And I don't understand why. The form felt good while I was doing it. I did bassai dai, and my friend who did kiban-4 got a better score than me! (Kiban-4 is a blue belt form.) As a potential black belt candidate for January, this is seriously distressing.

I lost my fight fair, there were only 3 judges in the ring, (the head ref and two other judges) and the two other judges couldn't see a lot of my points just because of the angle at which they were facing the fight.

Onestep, I got a decent score, but still didn't place. I was actually really surprised at my score because I missed the first punch and had to restart, a few of my leadups actually hit my partner, and I thought my followups were really off-target. I guess the judges didn't notice.

I busted the inside of my lip at Friday night workout b/c we were working on onestep with different sized partners, and this one guy whose usual partner is about twice my size, did a onestep technique on me and gave me a straight uppercut to the jaw. In the technique, he grabs his partner's lapel and then scoots in with the uppercut. When this guy works with his partner and grabs his lapel, he doesn't move. When he grabbed me, he ended up pulling me in and scooting forward with the uppercut at the same time. Serious contact.

I bruised my first knuckle on my ring finger during the fight b/c it somehow got bent backwards a, so I've taped it to my middle finger to keep it straight.

I have a cold, karate tonight, a lab tomorrow, a chem test friday, and finals are coming. Also, my chem final is two days after the last test.

BLOODY FANTASTIC.