A little note to keep in touch

Work has been going great.. but I have stopped training on my breaks.

I have applied for a supervisor position, and not everyone at work understands what a kata is, sparring drills, or even why I'm standing on the balls of my feet stretching upwards. After much thought, I had to evaluate what my goals are, and where I can apply myself.

Instead of training during my breaks, I focus on relaxing, calming down, breathing deeply, and building myself up for the upcoming stress of the next session of work. My goal now is to enhance my mental energy level.

I have decided instead to "steal" training time when I can from possible moments. Instead of expecting to have a full hour of devoted training, I snatch moments from the work day where there is opportunity.

Examples:

I take the stairs rather than the elevator, and run up if there is no one present. If there is no one in the bathroom, I'll send 10 quick roundhouse kicks for each leg, or do 20 quick push ups before leaving. When waiting at the bus stop, I'll stand in the one legged crane stance. I'll mentally do my kata, or remember rank requirements during those quiet waiting moments of the day. I'll do sit ups, back extensions, and conditioning as I watch t.v. with the kids. I push open doors with the ends of my five fingers, or with my knuckles to help condition them.

When we were at the hotel for my daughter's tournament, I woke up at 3 am, and went to the front lobby. After asking permission from the front desk, I took advantage of the large open area, and trained for an hour and a half focusing on basics, and kata (without kiai)

In my opinion, it is consistency that builds a skill into one's body. A little bit of training everyday would be worth alot more than lots of training once in awhile.

My Daughter did her best

This past weekend, my 11 year old daughter competed in her second Taekwondo Tournament. She put forth her best effort, made new friends, learned new skills, and achieved 3rd place in Board Breaking, 1st place in Sparring for her division.

For the first time in her life she experienced the fun of sliding down water slides with her Dad, and sibling.

One of the most memorable moments that I had was when we were traveling to the Tournament. We had stopped the car at a park to allow the girls to play in the playground, and for my husband to take a break from the constant driving. As the girls were playing on the teeter totters suddenly I saw a huge cloud of brown smoke rising from the treeline. I sat up concerned to notice 9 black dots in the center of the cloud quickly approaching us. To my amazement I realized that we were witnessing a practice session of a group of jet pilots.



They flew past us in a diamond shape with their smoke on, made a huge circle, came around, and past right overhead again in a square one on top of the other. It was amazing!

You should have seen my daughters jumping up and down on the grass applauding the jets.

At the time, I thought that it was quite a positive omen for the upcoming tournament, and I smiled to myself.