What's kickin'?

Now that I have my yellow belt I'm learning quite a few new kicks.  These include crescents, axe kicks, spinning backs, and some jumping kicks.  It's nice having a new challenge and I'm enjoying it a lot.  I don't know if it's from my background in sports like soccer and rugby, but it seems like I'm picking it up pretty quickly!

The biggest surprise (to me) is that I can actually do jump kicks that I would have previously sworn impossible.  I've always joked about how big girls don't exactly jump/fly well....  Even launching off my left foot isn't too bad, with the exception of the retreating front thrust.  That one, well, let's just say it's going to take some extra practice.  I think it MAY be a matter of mental block more than any actual impairment caused by the scar tissue, etc.

The kick that's giving me the hardest time (for now, at least) is not even a jumping kick.  It's a switch step axe kick.  The whole switch step thing is my first problem.  It's supposed to be very smooth and without the upper body moving much at all, so that just the feet switch places enough to bring you closer to your target.  I haven't quite figured out how to get that smoothness down.  The other issue was just pointed out to me last night while we were kicking against the pads to work on targeting.  After the switch step and DURING the actual kick I'm supposed to be rotating my hips to become square to the target.  It's that rotation in the hips that should get my leg to the target area, not a purposely reaching/diagonal motion with the leg like I'd been doing.  Oops.

The location of the classes here in town has moved.  The major upshot is that we no longer have to deal with the weird sticky rubbery floor any more.  We're back on a thinly carpeted floor more like the one in the main dojang.  The only downside to the new space is that we no longer have mirrors.  I don't generally take much notice of the mirrors anyway, BUT now that I'm working on all of these new kicks it was a really useful tool for checking my technique against Mr Saxton and/or the other students.  Still, glad to be rid of the sticky floor!