Saturday we had a good training session at Ogle's dojo in Madisonville.
We had about 15 black belts and a couple of under black-belt level guys in attendance.
We had sessions on New Weapons, Sport Kumite, Isshinryu Weapons and Full-contact fighting.
New Weapons
Master Pete Mills lead the first session. He demonstrated the use of the Kama. Then he demonstrated the use of the Chinese Broad sword.
Sport Kumite
Daniel Johnson lead the second session in place of Rick Breeden. Rick had a case of the flu and had sent Daniel with his outline of what to discuss. Daniel did a great job presenting Rick's information about Sport Kumite. He began by showing the group a beautiful orange and a very ugly ugly fruit. He asked which one looked better. Everyone agreed that the orange was the better looking. After this agreement, Daniel produced a bowl of orange/ugly fruit pealed and sectioned - no one could tell which was which. Exactly his point. When you step into a ring to compete, you can't tell if your opponent is good based simply on his external appearance. You must always assume that your opponent is at least as good as you are and it's safe to assume he's better.
Daniel continued the discussion by explaining that to win a kumite match, you must be agressive. Matches are not won by being defensive. You have to take chances to open up the opponent for a score.
We concluded the sport kumite session with some examples of agressive combinations to open the opponent up for a scoring technique.
Back fist, reverse punch.
Back leg crescent kick, chamber (not sitting the foot down), side kick.
Weapons Training
Next, we were divided into groups to work on weapons katas that we had not learned yet. I worked on SHISHI NO KUN. I had not woorked on it at all before this day. I worked with Master Pete Mills. He showed me about 50% of the kata. That was a large amount of the kata to learn, especially for a 20 minutes period. At the end of the day, I worked on it some more with Master James Ogle. With continued work I think I will be able to retain what I was shown.
Full-Contact Training
The last session of the day was lead by Master James Ogle. During this session, he showed techniques that he found were used in full-contact training.
Three punches. The lead-hand jab, the upper cut, and the reverse punch.
Three kicks. The round kick (delivered to the thigh), the straight "push" kick (delivered to an area above the groin, but below the belt), and the heal kick (delivered to the lower portion of the leg).
For there, we worked on these techniques with partners. After working these for a little while, we put pads on and began to work on them in a real situaiton.
Our first match was punches only. Second - punches and kicks. Third - punches, kicks and take-downs. Fourth - punches, kicks, take-downs and submissions. And lastly, full-contact sparing. He did prohibit hitting the head during all of these rounds, but other contact was full contact.
All-in-all, a very fun and educational day.
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