Takedown Thursday

 I got to class early again and I took my Eskrima sticks out of the plastic. I would have loved the wooden ones, but I couldn’t find any so I had to settle for the rattan sticks. The one is a bit lighter than the other, but I am sure this won’t be a problem and at R80 for one, I am not too concerned about their durability. I will keep looking for the wooden ones as replacements.

I spoke to the Sensei earlier in the day to confirm the time of the course tomorrow and he did sound a bit under the weather and so when I arrived to find him out of uniform I wasn’t too surprised when he informed us that he was sick and will be leaving shortly. All credit to him, he monitored the first half hour of the class to make sure we’re not slacking off before he left. I hope you get better soon Sensei, we missed you last night.

One of our more quiet and yet more prolific black belts took the class. He’s a bit shorter than most and seems quite harmless, but lightning comes to mind when you see him in action. He is probably the stealthiest and deadliest of the ninjas in our school and definitely the man I would select to sneak around and eliminate the sentries on the walls. This came through in his approach to training for the rest of the evening to.

First we made to lines of mats, one for rolling and the other for break falling. We ended up rolling down the one strip, and break falling up the other strip and face and attack another student to be taken down and break falling again. We then did 7^th kyu work on the mats. Everyone had a chance to perform a takedown on each one of the students in class and one by one we all had a chance to hone our takedown as well as get the break fall down to a tee. Some of the students still struggle with the break fall.

We ended off the evening with Kata Dante, The Sensei first demonstrated the kata on me for the rest of the class to better visualise it and then we did it as a group a couple of times before we greeted and parted ways.

Embrace the shadows.