It's good to slow it down sometimes

bushidowoman

I must confess that I've fallen into the trap of turning my martial arts workouts into little more than calorie-burning sessions. My focus has been on increasing my speed and power, hitting the bag full power, keeping my heart-rate up... (and these things are all good, mind you, but...)
I've been sick this week, and yesterday I felt a bit better. I wanted a light work out, to ease back into it. So I went out to the shed and pulled a sequence from one of our beginner katas, and I just worked that over and over for about 20 minutes.
During this time, I saw a hidden technique that I had never seen in the 10 years that I've been practicing this kata.
That to me was more of a victory than the amount of calories I burned.
Just had to share with others who "get it".

jean1058

Our Sensei tells a story about the founding father of our style. He says that he only had ONE kata, and did it over and over until he died. He believed that it's more effective to learn and master one kata really well than to learn many kata but not know any of it's bunkai for specific self defense situations.

It is very cool that you are peeling the onion and seeing another layer.

Hope you feel better.

thatwitch1

That is a great thing to hear! Thanks for sharing!!

bcc112986

Love it.

beckyinma

I love those lightbulb moments. They are the best! We had white belt testing last night and I so felt for those students standing in the center of the dojo while we higher ranks nit-picked their kata apart. For them, it hasn't yet clicked that only THEY can make their kata better, and that with all that nit picking, they need to choose one thing from the list to make better until their next test, then another after that test and so on. All the while learning a new kata and trying not to screw it up in the process.

Six6xiS

“I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who had practiced one kick 10,000 times.” ― Bruce Lee