Thursday Night Sweatshop

Thursday once again hailed bag night at Sensei George Andrews' Institute of Traditional Karate. It's a well known fact that Mr Andrews and his 4th Dan wife, Susan, are very devoted to helping children and foster care for many kids. Often the kids come to them a few weeks after birth, sometimes with drug issues coming from the mother. Yet after a time with those two, it's incredible to see what happy and calm children they turn into. They often come to the dojo and yet rarely cry, despite all the noise and bustle.

Today, the baby they are currently fostering, Grace, met her "forever" parents for the first time. She'll move in with them in December. She's a lovely baby who looks up at you with bright eyes and often smiles. Sue puts a lot of herself into caring for the darlings and always feels for them when they move on so she took tonight off training to rock Grace in her arms while we all got sweaty beating out the regular routine on the pads:

1. Reverse punchs
2. Low then high reverse punches
3. Jab then reverse punch
4. Reverse punch then front kick
5. Fronk kick
6. Double front kick
7. Roundhouse kicks

We did sets of 10 off of each side then a set of 10 more reps alternating each side so that two techniques count as one rep. It doesn't sound much yet it takes a lot of effort! I learned not to partner with someone who dawdles as you won't get through it all otherwise...

This weekend, Sensei George will host a seminar by Sensei Tony Christian, someone he'd trained with many years back and recently met up with. Apparently there will be a couple of hours of training followed by a presentation where Sensei Tony will explain, using his medical background, anatomy and how fighters may use this knowledge. I recall reading in Master Morio Higaonna's book, "History of Karate" that Master Chojun Miyagi was very interested with anatomy and combined studies from both Eastern and Western schools of thought at that time to enhance his own fighting skills that would in time become the great legacy known as Goju Ryu Karate. It's something which I've been fascinated to learn more about yet have never studied in any great depth from a Western Allopathic Medical point of view - my studies have largely centered upon Naturopathic Medicine. That looks more at how the function of the internal organs and the vitality of the body can be enhanced without surgical intervention, so I'm hoping the seminar will whet my appeitite to memorise the jargon of what's what in the body and understand it's interrelation from a functional and movement point of view. Roll on Saturday!