Zen and the art of aching thighs

For those that don't know, I do karate.  I'm attend two clubs, Caledonian Shotokai at the Caley Uni, and Waseda in the Whiteinch Community Centre.  Both clubs are part of the Shin-do Shotokai Association.  The Caley club is a Wednesday lunchtime, and Waseda is Thursday night.  Anyway, to get back on track, this week on Wednesday, we spent the majority of the class concentrating on proper stance, as it's easy to get sloppy, and if you do, you can't have a strong base.  The result was achey thighs, which after last night's class at Waseda, turned into VERY achey thighs.

I honestly don't think my legs were this achey after I ran the Edinburgh marathon a few years back !

Ach, it's all good though.

Karate course

Well, the day course at Whiteinch was yesterday, and it was really good fun.  The main practice was on drawing in the energy of your attacker.  We started off doing a practice with boken.  This was to get the feel of what we were eventually going to be aiming for.
Then, the without the boken, we paired up, with one person attacking.  The defender kept the hands as if holding the boken, and the movement was the same as in the boken practice.  You couold then draw in your attacker and get them off balance, and leave them open for your attack.  In practice, the effort required to get your attacker overbalancing, was a very light touch.  If a full punch had been used the effect would have been amazing.

All in all another very tiring but very good course.