Today we worked on Musha Dori. I appreciate our teacher. He is patient with those of us who are new to this art and can pin-point just where we are off in our Distance, Angles and Timing. He teaches us to observe the shape of Uke’s body with the techniques of the Kihon Happo so we will learn to recognise when to use what technique. Today we worked on various uses of Musha Dori
I didn’t go to the castle this weekend. The snow was very bad on Saturday. I started out to go and found that the roads were atrocious so I turned around and went back home.
Sunday training was, as always, fantastic! We worked on punching, rolls, body movement and angles. Tom brought out one of his favorite props for training in body movement. 
a stick and some rope to isolate the body movement. See the following pictures. The stick keeps the body centered as we moved through kamae and the Sanshin exercise
Saturday we trained outside in the open at the Squires Castle Park. The weather was clear, but crisp and cold. We did our usual Sanshin exercise and then we worked on Oni Kudaki with a cane. Tom purchased some training canes and brought one to class to demonstrate how to use it as an extension of our taijutsu. Very cool class! We worked on angles and timing to get the cane in place to grasp the elbow and of course, distance was also a main ingredient as always.
Sunday we trained for about three hours. We began with our usual Sanshin and Kaiten. To make working on our Ukemi and Kaiten more interesting Tom spread training knives all over the floor and told us to practice picking up a weapon as we rolled. It was a fun way to work on this important aspect of our Taijutsu. After our normal exercises we worked on ways to remove an attacker from beating another person. We made use of the Karate School’s standing bags to emulate a person being attacked. We also used a heavy bag on the floor for the same purpose. It was a fun and interesting class. Below are some pictures from today’s training:
