Sweet Sparring, and Lemonade

Last night, I applied some hard-won lessons in sparring class, and enjoyed the change. With instruction in recent weeks from Sempai Hemans, an old-time karate-style classmate, I applied a key lesson to sparring:

Don't kick a counterpuncher.

I have pretty good roundkicks. They're very effective against many classmates. But whenever I use a round kick on Hemans, he comes back with at least three quick, hard punches or kicks. He's so fast that I'm still trying to regain my stance from my kick, and so I'm not really prepared for it.

So instead, I just used my reach advantage and I jabbed. And circled. And jabbed and circled and jabbed and circled. I kept my right hand right up at my head for protection while my left was flicking out.

Result: No big openings for him to attack me. No thudding blows to my body and head.

I did the same thing with Joshu DeLury, who also is a counterpuncher. After a couple of minutes, he actually started laughing because he could see what was happening--he had no counterpunching opportunities. He dropped his hands and stuck his chin out to tempt me to attack recklessly. I didn't bite.

It was, very simply, so much fun not getting pounded into the floor by those two black belts.

Meanwhile, Hack Shaft has graciously nominated me for the "When Life Hands You Lemons" award. I still need to post the image of the award and nominate someone else for it, which I'll get to later this weekend. Got to get ready for class now.