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The 37th Annual Karate Winter Special Training (2007) at the Japan Karate Association of New Jersey was held from January 16 to January 20th, Tuesday to Saturday.

As is customary (for some odd reason), the weather on the first day of training was mild (58 degrees or so). And true to history, on the second day the temperature dropped more than 30 degress to 27. My barefoot, shirtless run was just under two miles that morning. The remainder of the week was not as cold as Wednesday.

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We practiced kihon, kata and kumite during each of the 5am classes. Training this week was very good.

Dow Jones has a fitness center on their campus in Monmouth Junction, NJ where I work. I joined back in 2001 when I started working on physical fitness because I was so out of shape. One of the trainers there, Darryl Shepherd, has studied martial arts. He begain teaching a combat conditioning class and I signed up. We pair up with a partner and do three-minute drills of focus mitt punching. This includes jabs, crosses, hooks, uppercuts and kicks. He’ll call out the combinations by number. One is a jab, two is a jab then cross, three is a jab, cross then hook. Or he’ll call out something like 10 left crosses. You get the idea. In between rounds, he’ll have us do push-ups or static holds, or jump-rope, or various other challenging exercises. It’s an all-around great class. Thanks Darryl. And thanks to Phil LaVoie too, who pushed for the class.

I practice Shotokan Karate under Katsuya Kisaka at JKA in Trenton, NJ. I recently passed my Ni-dan black belt test.