Well-knit

Had an interesting sensation tonight. We have a new student (yay!), a little girl about Robbie's age, already a soccer player, and delightfully enthusiastic about karate. We split up into pairs tonight and worked on kata, and I ended up being her teacher. Lots of fun.

Anyway, she's too new to really get into her first kata yet, so we worked on stance, blocks, punches and kicks - all the basics. But she wanted to know what the others were working on, so I explained kata, and then demonstrated Taikyoko 1 for her (this is our first basic kata, 1 of 3, that we teach to white belts - they're not an official part of the Isshinryu set). I guess either the improved energy, improved fitness, or perhaps the sheer amount of practice time is kicking in, because it felt...different. More connected, more powerful, like everything from my heels to my hairline was involved in every move. It's a dead simple kata, and one I could do in my sleep, which also likely contributed, but I don't know, it's never felt like this before. Before when I tried to be powerful, I was waving my arms about more strongly, or sometimes improving my mechanics, but the feeling of power came from my simply being a fairly large, muscular person. This time it felt like I could have punched through the wall, and I wasn't particularly trying harder.

I was intensely dissappointed that instead of switching up partners so I could try a more advanced kata and see if I could duplicate the feeling, we pulled out the tape and played foursquare for the last half-hour. I want to do it again! That felt like L (our brown belt, who does really impressive kata) looks.

And next class, no kata either - drat. I'm going to have to find a large enough spot somewhere to do some serious practice this week. Though I can't complain about the lack of class time - L goes up for his black belt Friday. I'll gladly donate kata practice time for that.