Hey, I’ve talked about goals before and I’m sure everyone forgets that they set resolutions and never started on them or maybe put them off till January 2nd and then January 3rd and then basically forgot all about them because that’s what we do! I set several resolutions which are still in the realm of possibility but around January 15th (I’m not even sure of the date) I updated my resolutions to include a couple new ideas. 1st new goal was to learn all 27 Shotokan katas. A kata is a series of moves that are performed in the same manner ever time. Each kata has a special move or focuses on a different nuance of karate. Most katas of the advanced katas contain at least 30 moves, some simple but some are rather difficult (hence the term advanced). There were quite a few that I had known briefly so my numbers quickly increased. We regularly train on the main 10 that I require for black belt. Then there are 3 others that I teach for competition. There are several others that I had known rather well but quit training them due to time constraints. I had dabbled with most everyone of the 27 at some time though so I wasn’t starting from sratch though. It’s really hard to keep all of them in your cranium. I really wanted to do this because very few people can claim to know them all.
I got off to a good started and I relearned 3 katas the first afternoon. I kept it up learning 2 a few days later and so on and I found as I practiced them it took longer and longer to practice and retain them and then on top of it learn additional katas. If I didn’t practice a kata for a few days it got fuzzy. On February 24th I finally had them all down with the exception of a jump in one kata that only young spry karatekas even attempt. Guess what my next goal is. Back to the katas.
On March 16th, much to my delight I downed another goal. I did all 27 katas back to back. I was pumped. Something that I had said I was going to do. Something that I don’t know another Shotokan practitioner has done, however it’s been done by plenty of karatekas, I just don’t know them.
On to the next goal. Oh by the way, did I mention that I did 10 push ups between each kata. Hmmm, I think that adds up to 270 push ups in about an hour or less. Wati that’s not all, I max out too but that’s a lot more than 10 and that’s part of another goal. I’ll let you know when I reach that one.
Shihan Culver
