Had a day off from the drudgery that is the office and instead spent some quality time with the wife doing a bit of shopping and a spot of second breakfast. At 4:30 pm however I presented myself at the dojo to cover 2 classes for the absent Pickles who was off on a jolly with his woman.
Sensei Doyland was obviously very excited about me teaching as he messaged me 2 minutes before I walked through the Dojo door saying “See you in a minute yeah?”, although it could have been related to the fact that there were 15 kids under the age of 8 waiting for their Wednesday evening chop chop.
we split the Kid Kick and Little Dragons up between us with me taking the Dragons (6 and under) who were greater in number than the Kid Kick’s. Its a very unpredictable thing teaching karate to persons of that age and size. Some days they all nail it, are impeccably behaved and as they walk off the tatami they leave you with a sense of pride and achievement that you did a good job.
Then there are other days when it is absolute purgatory with them all running amok, not listening, the odd one crying, lots of toilet breaks, a total lack of recall on which is left and which is right, fair amount of nose picking, and at the end of it not a huge amount of karate done. But I guess this is all part of learning how to be a good instructor, because all of the above scenarios are not wholly restricted to the classes for the under 6, the 8 years and upwards have their moments as well so knowing how to change this atmosphere into the hard work, focus and effort that karate demands is a valuable asset! I still have some way to go…..
So with wisdom and great technique imparted on to the young ones I turned my hand to the 8+ karate class that followed, usually one of the busiest of the week by all accounts. With horrific traffic and possible other reasons this one however contained just 3 kids, one of which had never done martial arts and actually turned up to do boxing. Wasn’t a bad class, they did as they were told, 2 of 3 knew left from right and we also managed a bit of dodge ball at the end.
Then it was me time, an hour of Kick Boxing to work out the knots, stresses and strains with a good run round, lots of abb work, few smacks in the mush and plenty of fluids lost in the form of skin leakage. Very different work out from Karate and is a nice change, although does effect your hand positioning when you return to a karate class. I keep finding myself either dropping into a Kumite stance in kicking boxing, or hands up like a boxer in karate class. One commonality between the two though is I cant kick in either so thats one less thing to worry about.