Author Archives: donnaauckland

To keep my own skill levels sharp, I’ve started heading up to Whangarei weekly on a Thursday. (Not the next 2 weeks, though). There is nothing better than spending time with guys that outrank you to make you lift your game, but it’s hard on the ego when you see that you’ve got a longContinue reading “16th August 2022, traveling time.”

The last night before term break, and I had the place to myself. What better way to warm up in the middle of winter than to run suicides. The hall is a bit small, but I managed to do blocks of 5 very slowly by #5 and sounded like a busted radiator but kept moving.Continue reading “5 July 2022, even when it’s just you, keep it going.”

Lots of postures practise, went back over chi no kata and then into sui no kata. Spent a fair amount of time trying to get away from a step-chop action to a proper shuto. but these things do take time to learn where the real power comes from, rather than an arm muscle load up.

Tonight it was classic punch/block work.Started with single punches and blocking to either the inside or outside of the strike. Then we moved to two strikes with random inside or outside blocks. One person found it confronting and cried a little, but that’s ok. The dojo is the place to work through those emotions andContinue reading “7 June 2022. Striking practice, emotions are never far below the surface.”

Started off with rolls. Then it was getting used to moving while striking with the hanbo. The old hand, foot and eye combination never fail to trip someone up. After that, we did some simple scenarios, Attempted grab, evasion and drop back into seiganUsing the hanbo to do a wrist control (ura gyaku) from aContinue reading “10th May 2022, hanbo again”

Hanbo introGetting a feel for how it moves.Timing with the feet and keeping the shoulders relaxed.Two-handed horizontal arc strikes working through the 8 angles, forward, back, sides and 45°s (no jumps or ducking tonight).Led on to working with the large shield to feel the impact (and the bounce back!) of a simulated gut strike. ProperContinue reading “3rd May 2022. Hanbo, probably one of the easiest weapons to translate to modern life.”

Kat got annoyed when I put one blue mat down in a random spot when we laid out the interlock mats last week all pink side up. So she got to it first this week and made sure that all were set up in a square with one blue mat in the middle 🙂 TodayContinue reading “Tuesday 22 March, it’s all in a bit of fun.”

Had a bit of fun with a game of rolling tag for a warm-up. Followed by some light grappling practice to work on posture and balance. After that, it was an introduction to Osoto Gari, again really focusing on the need for good posture and how to mess with theirs.Kamae were Ichmonji, Hoko & DokoIntroducedContinue reading “Balance and posture”

It’s hard to tell if your posture is good until it gets tested. Walking in a storm is a very different experience from an afternoon stroll. How good are my postures if someone is trying to push me back? When should I hold steady vs flow away? You can talk and talk about lowering yourContinue reading “Resistance work for understanding postures”

We will restart on 1st February 🙂 While it’s under the red traffic light, we’ll need to keep it as non-contact as possible. We will work through the Ten Chi Jin as the main focus and some sword work over the term.