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Just so all of you don't think I am any stranger than you already do, the title of my challenge this time is from an old song named KISS from The Art of Noise that was sung by Tom Jones. It has the words "I think I better dance now" and since I need to improve may stances for Karate, I felt the title would be appropriate. The main reason that I want to improve my stances is because I learned something very interesting at my last Karate tournament while watching all the older folks compete. Most of the senior (over 35 year old adults are called seniors in my club, which I am not too fond of but that's another story) competitors do not have good, low stances while doing their katas. Stances aren't the only important part for winning but if I can lower my stances and still move well, I think I can put a dent in the group of people that always place ahead of me. With that said, it's time to get down to business and embark on another six week journey of pain and suffering fun! 1. Stances the Tabata way three times a week: This is something that I worked on in the past but stopped doing for some reason. I have seen how much this can help after watching one of the kata athletes that I have been training do this and his improvement are incredible. Four minutes of stance training doesn't sound like much, right? I haven't figured out yet if I am going to work on one stance or multiple stances for the time but this needs to be done at least three times a week. My thoughts are front stance left and right, horse stance, back stance left and right and another horse stance and for the last two 20 second sets, one day cat stance and the other day cross leg stance left and right. 2. 1000 push ups a month and a little more: This is something that a fellow former Karate instructor and friend of mine suggested for his personal training clients. He started a Facebook challenge for all his clients and whoever else wants to do it, to do 50 push ups a day (in sets of 10 throughout the day) to make a total of 1000 push ups for the month of November. I should have started this a few days ago but I'm just lazy, like always but I still have 26 days anyway, right? Instead of doing only push ups, I am going to add side jackknifes, glute bridges and some form of ab work. The plan is to do 10 reps of each movement, do a Karate and Iaido kata and repeat for 5 sets. I did a test run of this workout tonight and it was done in well under 30 minutes including some time on the foam roller. 3. Improve my Karate - two parts = double the fun: Over the the last challenge, my overall Karate improved more than it has in some time. My kicks are better, moving from hips is better and my posture is better than ever before. These were all areas that I needed to improve on and I want to continue to step it up further. A. This time around, I am going to continue to do the extra Karate class at home but this time, I am only going to it once each week. Between the formal class, Iaido class, teaching three days a week, the dedicated kata session with my coach and trying to do the extra class twice wasn't allowing me to recover. B. More mobility and flexibility is needed. Doing Cheechoe's hip routine has been a huge help at improving my kicks. I am kicking higher than ever before and I was able to deliver my side kicks with power that I have never had in the past. With that said, I still need more improvement and I plan on doing Cheechoe's routine at least once a week along with Eric Wong's HFS routine twice a week. If I can find a Yoga routine that I can actually do, like the routines on doyogawithme.com, I would like to get in at least on Yoga session each week, no matter how simple. Life Goal: Over the last few months, my focus has sucked to say the least. Simple tasks that should take a short amount of time are taking me days to finish because I can't get my focus. I haven't been writing as much and it seems that my mind is always spinning in all directions. Because of this, I need to start meditating again. If I it's 5 minutes three times a week I will be happy but I really need to get my mind under control again so that I can make my life better and I hope that the mediation will help. Disclaimer: Like all of my challenges in the past, this one is subject to change at any time.