During the last 3 months I have been steadily improving. During the month of June I was starting to improve my kicks and my punches but this month I also hurt a lot of people, ha ha.

It made me feel like I need to learn more control, since during June a brown belt pulled his leg muscle doing a jiujitsu move on me (that day a person who took jiujitsu showed us some of the moves in the shotokan class) so I haven’t seen him in a while… Another person also received a hairline fracture on one of his fingers by punching me in the knee when I went to kick him, and another one also sprained his toes on my knee!

As a result of this I’ve been doing a lot better at improving my control during July and August. During these months I also greatly improved my side snap kick as I’m starting to get it to really snap back like it’s supposed to. I’m also getting a lot more coordinated in moving my ankle around during the kick so I can get my toes up and my foot out which gives me better technique.

I also learned a few kata. I have improved my Heian Nidan and I’ve learned Heian Yondan, Heian Sandan and a bit of Godan as well. So far, out of everything my kata is the best of the three k’s. Although my kumite isn’t that bad either, my reaction time has improved which resulted in a little bit of improvement in my blocking as well.

I decided to scratch the idea of getting a makiwara too, since I’m moving and I would have nowhere to put it. My horse stance is also starting to get better, but in Heian Sandan I’m still having a little trouble doing the pivots into the horse stance, but I’m sure with time that will improve too.

During the beginning of August I also received my orange belt. I really liked getting that since I hated the colour yellow to begin with. I also am going to start taking Brazilian jiujitsu often too. I started my first BJJ class August 21st and I loved it.

Another great thing that is happening is that my shotokan class will now have a class for ages 16+ which means…. NO MORE KIDS! Which makes me ecstatic since they’re playfulness was really getting on my nerves.

Right now my shotokan experience is getting better and better and now the classes are starting to seem kind of mechanical. The repetitiveness of it all are making the classes seem a lot easier now and doing combos in kihon are a lot less confusing to me. I can now understand long drawn out moves with just one example of my sensei doing them, which lets me think about what moves in more depth. My power and speed has not gotten much better though, but my technique has improved greatly. Many of my kicks still need a lot of improvement since I tend to kick too low sometimes, and my roundhouse kicks need a lot of work as well as my side thrust kicks, but my mae geri and side snap are not too shabby. All in all these past three months have been a pretty good karate experience and I have more confidence in my potential to become a better karateka. I have been starting to love the martial arts, it’s very fun especially my new BJJ class since those guys are very rough which I absolutely love.