"Bushidokan" Category

Ahh the aches and pains of the morning after a hard night at training. Last night was my first “Lean and Fit” class, which focuses on cardio and muscle strength. I was amazed at how much strength I’d lost over the break. Prior to the year ending I could do roughly 35 pushups (knuckles, elbows in) and 80 situps in one go, last night I struggled with half that number. I know my starting point for the next twenty-off weeks.
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Last night was my first night back at (Bushidokan) training. It’s only 22 weeks (roughly) to the Black Belt grading, and about 10 weeks to the candidacy tests (whether we’re allowed to go for Black Belt this time around), so it’s time to start getting into it.

We’re on a limited summertime schedule so last nights class was a mix of all ranks from white to almost black, run by the senior non-black belt student (Jeff). This meant revisiting some basics and a bit of fun. It was sweltering in the dojo so it didn’t take much to start sweating. We did cover some of the ground defence stuff, which is an area I need to put a lot of practice into.

It was interesting to see how the body shaped up after a break over Christmas. Whilst the cardio seemed pretty good with the walking/riding I’ve done over summer, the notice the strength seems to have lost it’s edge; a long bout of pushups and core strength exercise beat me. Time to start the push-ups and sit-ups, as well as getting back into the lean and fit classes.

I also had a bit of residual stiffness, particularly in my shins, from the trailwalk training walk on Sunday. I can see balancing martial arts and trialwalk training will be a challenge until I achieve a reasonable level of fitness. The two are suppose to complement each other, not cancel each other out!

Well it’s Jan 1, 2009. Time to start planning for the two big personal goals for the year; completing the OXFAM Trailwalk with the teams from Ultimate and passing my Black Belt Grading in June.
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