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Went to my mates Karate class tonight, his dad teaches it. The usual antics happened, me being a 7th dan that doesn't speak much English, yada yada.
I got paired up with this white belt at the start and we did this combination ending in a take down. I don't know how it was supposed to go but I was doing something like fore foot irimi mawashi geri shoto ken into the kidneys and then the take down, which was meant to be a sweep I was doing as chudan irimi nage omote but holding the chest.
So me and the white belt went at a pedestrian pace and then we swapped partners. I grabbed my mate, there's no point going to your mates class if you don't train with your mate for a bit. So his dad is explaining things and my mate and I are having this discussion, mainly non-verbal, about how hard he's going to throw jodan tsuki at me. Eventually he shrugs his shoulders and his dad calls "hajime!" and my mate tries to take my head off but I move and batter him into the wooden floor.
What is it about training at full power? He gets up and he has this look on his face that's all "Yeah, good, more" so I batter him four more times and then we swap and there's kiai and everything and he's slamming me into the floor.
So then comes sparring and again, we battered each other. We talking about it afterwards though. For an Aikidoka taking a punch in the gob and a kick to the ribs is meaningless as long as we get into grapple but for a Karateka there's actually a bit of an aversion to getting hit because the training is to keep your opponent at that optimum striking range but not get hit more than you hit them.
Thinking about this it's true; when I train with strikers,yeah I'm taking some pretty big hits, when you're doing things full contact there's no messing around, but I'm only taking a couple of big hits; it's no where near enough to stop me as I enter in and get hold of something.
I might worry about the pain in the morning but at the time, to be honest, I don't really care. I find over and over with strikers that I'm easily getting in and the only real problem I have is that I'm wearing gloves and I can't get a proper grip so I end up having to grab them, as in hug them, around the waist or go for RNCs or sweeping their leg after catching a kick.
This isn't a massive issue but it limits me to like four techniques.