[BigAl]

I do it at night before bed and haven't had any problems falling asleep. Well, not any additional ones :P

I realized it has been a while since I posted anything on here, been pretty busy naturally. All is well for the most part, just got back after two weeks at home of snogging the wife, petting the dog, swimming in the pool, seeing family and friends, grilling steaks, and sleeping in.

No dramatic increases in my training as of late, it's been difficult to fit in at times. I did however recently add in two more areas I'm going to experiment with.

The first is a larger emphasis on stances. "The hidden secret of karate", as I read it. It makes sense, as a solid stance helps you deal with the rebound of your strike better and especially since I've been working more on driving the foot into the ground it makes more sense to give it a bigger emphasis.

The second is pretty cool. I bought a few cheap candles and set up my drawers so that it's at about chest height and am working on trying to extinguish the flame with seikens, shutos, urakens, mae geris, yoko geris, and mawashi geris. For the urakens and mawashi geris, I'm trying to extinguish it on the return, not with the actual strike itself. It's pretty fun and challenging, and it's a good feeling when you get it.