Karate 16

Marilyn and I were awarded our yellow belts today and others were awarded their respective belts as well. Mark, a new awarded brown belt, led the class in warm ups and katas for the first hour. We dwelt a long time on push ups, and other core exercises so we hate him now, LOL! The second hour we learned our first Pinan kata today, a Pinan Nidan. I really like it because it involves different footwork than the Kihon katas. New to the Pinans are 45 degree turns, the cat stance, and shutos in the horse stance, and hammer fist strikes.

With learning that Pinan kata ( at least the main flow of it) we now know everything we need to grade to our orange belts this March. It will, however take a lot of practice to get it right, and also we need to continue practicing what we learned previously as white belts too. We learned kihon kumites 1 through 5 as white belts, and now have learned (however imperfectly) kihon kumites 6 through 10 for grading towards our orange belts. We learned kihon katas 1 through 5 plus Ko Tai Ran as white belts and now know (again imperfectly) kihon katas 6 through 10 towards our orange belt grading PLUS the Pinan Nidan.

It was a tiring but productive class today. Now to rest.