Jo Tuesday

I psyched myself up the whole day for a sparring session only to leave my cloves at home. I realised my mistake half way to the dojo, but I decided that it’s probably better that I not spar because I was quite stiff from the kettlebell training the previous day. When I got to the dojo, no one wanted to play with the Eskrima sticks either so I decided to just stretch and prepare for the class.

We started off with the Devastators as warm up. It was tough going and many students fell out half way. I worked myself and soon I was sweating. We did elbow to knee crunches, four sets of twenty five, I barely made it. Then we went over to the plank. My abs was shot and I couldn’t hold it for longer than thirty seconds. Mercifully that was the long and short of the warm ups and I told the Sensei that we should skip the bag work, cause we were all pretty wasted.

We broke up into our groups and we decided on the Jo as the tool for the job. One of the seniors took to training us and we focused on the strikes and blocks with the Jo. My Jo is a bit short and light and we mostly used one Eskrima stick instead and the length and weight made a big difference in striking. The locking and manipulation becomes a bit more difficult in some instances due to the length, but I feel it’s just a matter of training with it a bit.

We ended off the class tired and spent and everyone was happy to go home. I lingered for a bit to see if anyone was up for a bit of action, but even I was wearing thin on energy and the decision to pack my stuff up and hit the road was an easy one. Getting fit for the grading is first priority and some people have a lot of work to do to get there. Good luck.

Embrace the shadows.