Karate on the 3rd Floor

We are on week something and it is ...I forgot again...Tuesday, Friday, maybe Monday, (does it actually matter?) of being generally confined during the Covid-19 outbreak. The box gym is closed, my access to the dojo is closed, my apartment gym is closed. Outside is open, but truthfully as much as I love running I can only do so much of it. It probably doesn't help that I need new running shoes, and the makers of my favorite shoes are currently out of stock of my size. But lets be real, I need karate. And I am not exactly anti karate outside, but when you live in an apartment and don't have your own backyard, well as you can imagine it draws a lot of attention...and you end up stepping in a lot of weird stuff.

The good news is I have not gone crazy, yet. And my state is scheduled to start opening some things in a couple days, but I am sure it is going to be slow and problematic. Which leaves training in your livingroom.

I live in a two bedroom apartment, on the third floor. I just moved in here at the beginning of April, which makes trying to get to know your neighbors a little difficult if you are trying to stay 6 feet away, or just generally away from people. I also couldn't really soften them up to the idea of me jumping, kicking, kiai-ing (? lol) and other various martial arts moves by bringing them homemade cookies or the like. Homemade chocolate chip cookies can usually go a long way into convincing your neighbors that two hours of banging around on their ceiling each day is tolerable. Thankfully my husband, who is definitely the more outgoing of the two of us volunteered to go meet the downstairs neighbor, and explain our situation and ask him to let us know if we are too loud or obnoxious with the sound. Lucky for us, he was super chill about it, and was like go for it. For anyone that knows the kata Anan or Suparinpei or especially Ohan-Dai a 3x4, or truly when accounting for the walls, a 2.5x4 size mat space requires a lot of stopping mid form and backing up or sliding over, or occasionally crashing into the wall that you didn't realize you were that close to. It has made for a lot of repping sections of kata verses doing the whole form non stop. And endless hilarity from trying to stop mid movement before you step on or kick the dog or cat who decided you needed help practicing your sudden stopping ability, lol. Seriously I have almost kicked or stepped on both of my animals so many times in the last month. I also discovered how much my cat likes to sleep on my gi too.

Hopefully where ever you are you have been able to keep training, and have as much fun dodging animal land mines as I have.