Goju – Three months on

Well it’s been just over three months since I started training with my current school. I must say I’m still struggling; both physically and technically. My fitness has dropped off significantly since the Black Belt qualifier with Bushidokan; I struggled to do 20 push-ups last night.

I’m also up against it technically. I’m certainly a few belts behind my current level with the technical skills required at Goju and part of the problem is that I don’t know what my requirements are and how far I’m behind. There’s a large range of stuff we’re doing that is all founded off the traditional Goju techniques, and a lot of traditional stuff we didn’t do at Bushidokan. For example the kata requirement for Shodan Ho is Seinchin, with Saifa the 1st Kyu kata (one kata higher than Bushidokan). I’m still getting on top of Saifa and don’t know the complete sequence of Seinchin, so when we barrel through it I get lost halfway. I know it will come with time and I need to keep asking questions, but it’s frustrating.

There are many kata that we just didn’t do at Bushidokan, many similar to the beginner H-pattern kata we did in Shotokan all those years ago, and some that we did that aren’t in the Goju kyu-grade syllabus (such as the Heihan). We’ve now added a degree of complexity by moving to Okinawan versions of the kata and also playing with doing the kata as fast as possible.

But the kata requirements are just a small part of this big obscure cloud of requirements that include kihon drills, sparring drills, kiyogi and bunkai, and probably some other areas I’ve not encountered yet. I need to get a copy of the 1st Kyu and Shodan Ho syllabi so atleast I know when we’re covering relevant material.

But my biggest challenge….. the soft side of the Go-ju hard/soft style is constantly catching me out. There’s a lot of focus on the soft in what we do, either in Aikido-based techniques or just trying to get speed into traditional Karate techniques. Much as a try to not tense up I seem to be doing it, even if I’m not aware of it. It’s bloody frustrating.

All of this is not helped by significant absences from training due to holidays and big jobs at work. It looks like I’ve got a few weeks in Canberra coming up, so there’s another hit. I’m eagerly awaiting the day when I get off the steep learning curve and the aspects of this style start to “make sense”!