« December 2011 | Main | February 2012 »
Before he passed in 2009, my father would use his artistic abilities in many ways including drawing cartoons on birthday cards. The drawing below is from 2008 and, in typical fashion, my father customized it to note my jujitsu hobby. You can click on the image to see a large version.
Despite not being able to train yet due to my recent surgery, I dropped by class tonight to say hello and let folks know that I was doing fine. Sitting on the couch gave me a different perspective and I had three thoughts that I wanted to pass along.
Although this is only my second week away, I already findling it difficult to sit and watch. My body was almost twitching with muscle spasms as it's conditioned to perform the techniques and not to watch them. It's always good to come by and watch instruction without having to perform the techniques. You keep more lots of the nuances and can see the instruction given to all parts of class. That said, it was sort of painful to have to sit by.
Secondly, it was impossible not to comment and try to provide instruction to the students training directly in front of me. On a couple occasions they even looked my way for advice. I'm not sure it's okay to instruct from the couch. My guess is that you should only do that from the mats.
Lastly, during a typical class, I'm located at the far end of the mats near the kamiza. I'm usually paired up with my fellow brown belts and receiving instruction from a black belt. I can see down the mats but only catch an occasional glimpse of action. Watching from the side, I could see all the various pairings working. The wide variety of abilities and level of expertise was pretty amazing. Watching Shihan walk along the mat from group to group, I couldn't help but think of one of those old schoolhouses where the teacher had all level of students crammed into a single room. That's one of the challenges I saw Shihan working with tonight. He had everything from first-graders to college students and, as he walked across the mats, he continually needed to shift gears to provide instructions for each group.
It was fun to watch class but I'm looking forward to my return on 2/2.
Recent Comments