Yes, Virginia, There Is a Samurai

I enjoyed a great karate seminar last weekend. Sensei Toru Shimoji was hosted by Sensei Karl Burgart of the Tradition Karate Association of Wildwood, MO. Sensei Shimoji is 5th Dan. The seminar was phenomenal. He is a tremendous athlete and his karate is spectacular to behold. One of the things that impressed me most was how learned he is. As he was talking to us about ways to improve our karate, he easily used examples from physics, anatomy, and even some molecular biology. I know he's a sculptor. To me, he seemed just like the samurai warrior-poets that you read about. We need more people like him in the world, I think.

Kata

This evening I've been practicing my Shotokan kata. Since I started training again after a long absence, I've mostly been doing Heian Shodan and Heian Nidan when we're asked to practice "our kata" in the dojo. I'd pretty much forgotten all the ones I'd learned in North Carolina, and I really need to get them back and train them hard. It finally dawned on me (duh) that I'm probably not going to be able to do that by just going to class; I'm going to have to work on them outside of class as well.

So, tonight I worked on Heian Sandan, Heian Yondan, and Heian Godan. I'm still a bit rusty, but I think I can at least make it all the way through each of them now. There's still some muscle memory left for a lot of parts, which helps. I'll work on these until I get them down again, then I'll work on Tekki Shodan and Bassai Dai (my favorite of all the kata I've learned). Once I get those, that will pretty much get me back to where I was before I moved to Massachusetts and stopped training in Shotokan.

By the way, I've been training at the Missouri Karate Association for about 2 months now (minus a couple of weeks for business travel), and I think the instruction there is great.