Burn With Us

Our third class on Tuesday nights in karate has become as much about the workout as learning. We run kata for stamina and cardio, do a lot of horse stances and stretching to improve our flexibility, do several kicks for cardio (and warming up), various and sundry push-ups, and at least one tension kata which improves breathing and overall conditioning. Doing that week after week, it’s tough to see any real improvements, physically. I’m still at a weight plateau, but I’m seeing minor changes in my build and my flexibility and strength.

Tonight, however, I had a definite “wow!” moment.

We’ve got review again next week, and I’m up for my first purple stripe, which means I have to perform a lot of the material I already know all over again. It will be my longest review to date as well, as I’ve got a lot of material to cover. Tonight I decided to do a dry run through the whole thing, including a few repeats of things I felt were a little rough. Forty minutes of self defenses, wazas, and kata later, I also tossed in the other new kata I learned, a Kajukembo kata called nekobudo #1. I was dripping sweat and exhausted, but realized I hadn’t worked any calisthenics.

I dropped down for push-ups, figuring I’d be lucky to hit 10.

Instead I rocked out 20 good ones.

I could always hit 20 fresh, but I expected post-workout would be quite different. It’s the first example of how far the push-ups in that Tuesday night class have taken me. We sometimes do push-ups on a Swiss ball, for example, or use dumbbells or Perfect Pushup stands, which changes the intensity and focus of the standard push-up. We’ve joked about how easy they’ve made standard push-ups during the other classes, but again, I never imagined it would extend to an end-of-workout set.

Way cool.