USKL January 2020 Special Training
On January 30, 2020 the Defense Arts Center celebrated the New Year with its first ever Special Training since moving to its new location in Upland.
Sensei Tom Heyman, USKL Godan, led the class, sharing insights and anecdotes from his many years of participating in very intense special trainings organized within the Shotokan Karate of America (SKA) organization and led by their head instructor, Mr. Tsutomu Ohshima.
Twelve students were in attendance: Shihan Ty Aponte, Senseis Lynn Aponte and Leo Shortle, David Voiles, Christie Vella-Kramer, Don Marrolli, Jesús David Jerez Gomez, Shaw and Maya Siegel, Ti Tran, Alexander Vance, and Dr. Dave Michelson (yours truly).
The class began with Sensei Heyman explaining the meaning of Special Trainings or gasshuku (合宿: lodging together). The theme for our class was the concept of misogi (禊), a Japanese Shinto purification ritual in which participants traditionally stand under an ice-cold waterfall. As Sensei explained,
“Special trainings are an opportunity for us to push ourselves more than we do in our normal practice; to dig down deep into our subconscious parts and find out that we are much stronger than we thought. In our daily lives, we manipulate our environment to match our spoiled, lazy mentality. In special trainings, we put ourselves into hardship, a difficult environment, and our mentality must rise to the occasion. The practice is to ideally push ourselves from top to bottom, first moment to last moment, without any weak thoughts, moments of feeling sorry for ourselves, or 'cruising'. We hone and polish ourselves, our mentality, and our spirit like the multitudinous folding and pounding out of impurities used in the making of a samurai sword. In this way, we face ourselves honestly and strictly, rid ourselves of our weak parts, and try to find our ideal technique, ideal breathing, and ideal mentality.”
After a brief warm-up with calisthenics and stretching, the real fun began. The students stood in a circle and performed 150 squats concentrating on good form and a steady rhythm. Each student took turns counting as Sensei occasionally encouraged us to slow down, stay focused, and “tighten your mind”. My own legs felt like Jell-O at this point, so I was felt lucky that Sensei went “easy” on us and gave us a rest and water break.
The next exercise was done in the dark so that we would be freed of distractions and more able to concentrate on just our own actions. Sensei said he wanted to share the experience of a midnight training in nature, far from city lights. Even with the lights in the training space turned off, there was a bit of light coming from the front office, and our eyes adjusted. As the exercise continued, Sensei closed the door to that room, leaving us in near pitch black. We were lined up along one edge of the mat and went forward and back performing oitsuki (追い突き: lunge punch or chasing jab), with each student counting. Sensei urged us to try to make each punch better than the last and to imagine ourselves breaking through an opponent’s guard, pushing ourselves into and through them with total alignment of our fists, foreheads, hips, and knees. He reminded us to breathe naturally through each punch without holding our breath and to use this opportunity to practice the true meaning of kiai (気会い: energy/spirit harmony). He asked us try to join our mental, physical, and spiritual forces into one focused action with ferocious power. In all we did 560 punches.
For the next exercise, we performed the kata Tekki Shodan 14 times, with each student giving the commands to start (hajime: 始め), stop (yame: やめ), and relax (yasume: 休め). Sensei encouraged us to start out using a deep stance and to push ourselves to deepen our stance each time through. He told us that prior special trainings would often end with the students performing this kata 100 times - and that by the 50th he would kiai on every move. He told us that the current president of the black belt association has done Tekki Shodan more than 100,000 times and that it shows in his technical brilliance. He also said he would sometimes move around the training space to push younger students to train harder and that he very much appreciated being called “an animal” by them afterwards. Since he knew this to be the last exercise of the training, he said, his intention was always to finish with nothing left in reserve, having put all of his energy into his training and left on the field. He and others would often lose their voices from the intensity and number of their kiais. Toward the end of our shorter version of this exercise, Sensei had us add kiais to our every move. This was when my brain started to shut down, but the rest of the students hung in and finished strong.
Finally we lined up and did ki breathing. Sensei asked us to breathe in as deeply and slowly as possible and to then breathe out as fully and slowly as possible, with our mouths wide open. Sensei encouraged us to imagine drawing breath into and filling our centers, our tanden (dantian in Mandarin Chinese), a point a few inches below the belly button but also deep inside. He reminded us that tanden (丹田) means red (fire) rice paddy (source of food, energy, and life). It is also called the elixir-of-life field or sea of energy. He asked that we imagine our exhalation to be like a tightly focused beam of our energy, traveling forward for at least 100 miles, maybe going all the way around the earth to hit the back of our heads. Sensei shared that at his peak he could breathe once per minute, inhaling for 30 seconds, then exhaling for 30 seconds. As we settled into our practice of this we were probably reaching 20-30 seconds per breath. Sensei clicked two wooden sticks together to synchronize our breaths.
We closed the class, exhausted but refreshed, using our mokuso (黙想: meditation) to visualize the goals we hope to pursue in this new year for ourselves, our loved ones, our dojo, and our community.
We took a few class photos and said our goodbyes for the night, as Sensei Heyman warned us, with a smile, that we might be even more tired than we realized and that special training was not truly over until we had all gotten home safely.
