Taking Direction.

Karate thoughts again. It’s just so woven into my life. I went down to New York last weekend for an outdoor “system-wide” workout in Central Park. Hanshi Scaglione was up from Florida, and one of our Kyoshi and 6 Sensei were present. We could not have asked for a more perfect day to be out of doors, and I got a GREAT parking spot on 69th just off Madison Avenue (yeah, I grew up in New York. A good parking spot can make the difference between leaving Sunday night or going back home sometime on Monday or Tuesday). The workout lasted 4 ½ hours, which was enough time for a LOT of corrections to be suggested – in technique, stance, all kindsa stuff. And quite a few of the corrections went against what I had been taught, so there was a fair bit of discussion about that at the next class I attended back home, among those of us from our dojo who had attended this event in New York.

Basically, one needs to be able to take direction. On the deck or in the booth. If Hanshi or the client wants you to do it THIS way, then that’s what you do. Later, when you’ve sorted through it all and decide what advice you want to keep and what you don’t, you’ll arrive at your own style – well, not exactly style, but maybe your karate “happy place”, and hope that it doesn’t get you into trouble when you’re testing for black belt (for example). Maybe you can look like you’re doing it one way and actually do it another – like when they say, “speed up your read, but make it sound slower”. LOL.

Yeah. Anyway, it was a glorious, tiring day. Nice people, lots of exercise, no traffic on the trip down or back. And Kyoshi runs a production company in New York, so it was great to make that connection too :)

Central Park Workout September 2006 (photo courtesy of Sensei Michael Mackay)