Started learning Kenpo Karate

I have started attending Kenpo Karate (one of the forms of Karate martial arts) classes today at a local training institute. Today i attended the first class and learned about some basic stances and some ways to block an attack. The best part is the initial warm up exercise that we get to do in a group. It was very tiring for the first day and we did it for 30mins. There will 3 classes per week and 1.5hr per class.

It was in 1993 that i attended Taekwon-do martial art classes for 3 months but had to leave it because of the study pressure. I joined a gym when i got into engineering college in 1994 and for the first year i could go to the gym regularly but slowly with mounting study pressure i became irregular with gym too and though i continued on an irregular basis till i got my first job in 1999, i could not keep up with gyming once i was in Banglore in the winter of 2000. We had a gym in my Bangalore apartment too but i never could kindle the fire to exercise there. But it has been my desire always to keep fit (as also noticed in this blog's name: FitProgrammer@Work) and when it was time to come to the USA i decided i will get trained in Boxing in USA. But my wife was not very happy with that idea :) considering the first impression one has of Boxing is that its associated with gore. I could not find a local boxing institute in the Maynard region (the nearest was 15mi from my residence) but i could find one martial arts training center very close to my workplace (0.2mi from both my residence and workplace - literally on the way between my residence and work place). Martial arts is not going to be as dull as going to a gym where you train yourself alone and so you require to be very self motivated to persist in the regimen. My experience has been that i tend to loose the fizz with time when i went to gym. I persisted better with martial arts. Probably the idea of exercising in a group environment appeals more to my psyche.

So lets see how it goes... i will keep posting on my learnings in Kenpo(aka Kempo) Karate.

Updates:

6 May, 2007: I have learnt all that is required of a non-ranked student of Griffin Kenpo which includes,

1. Basic stances and Half-mooning
   
2. Kicks - Iron broom, dropping knees, sliding knees, front, back, side, hook, crescent, reverse crescent and their combinations.
3. Punches and 8 Blocks
4. Rolling and Falling
5. 3 techniques to free my hand when caught

Though i should have completed this learning much earlier but for some or the other reason i was not regular in my classes but the good thing is that i am continuing to learn Karate and i am enjoying it a lot.