It should come as no surprise that just about everything has moved to some sort of online forum in the past year. In my household, we’ve even started doing some shopping and Costco orders online and had them delivered; something we had never done prior to the pandemic. Considering that most things have been slowly moving towards online options in the past decade or so, the pandemic has been that last little push that was needed to force us to do everything else without face-to-face-contact. This week, the karate club I train with started having classes on Zoom.
It was a strange and different experience, that much I can say. As you can see from the image above, we all met via Zoom and took instruction from Master Harding as he guided us through an hour’s workout. It was interesting to see everyone who had made do with whatever space they had available in living rooms, basements and home dens. I was among the lucky ones that had a large, open space to work with that included my black, foam workout mats. But as I’ve written in previous posts, karate doesn’t require much more than a four by six-foot space to train in. And the group proved that, over the sixty minutes that followed. ☯
The Blogging Buddhist 
Pretty cool. I could see it working pretty well for most striking arts. Not so sure about something like Aikido or Jujitsu though. Maybe your instructor could be the next big thing on iFit or Peloton classes. 🙂
We have our sun room converted to a fitness area right now. Complete with a 4′ x 8″ mat from an Amazon seller (2″ thick gymnastics type), and a Century B.O.B. “heavy bag”. I’m still holding off on most martial arts related training until my back progresses further though.
How did the virtual class go vs an in-person one? Do you feel like Master Harding was able to catch small points on form that needed correction, etc?
LikeLike
I agree, for something more directly related to grappling and/or throwing, it would basically impossible to cover any specifics. But it’s working pretty well for us, so far. We’re keeping it pretty basic for the moment as we work out the kinks and issues. Basic warm-up followed by basic drills that are mostly known by the students who join.
The good side of it, is it allows us to get a short workout in together since we haven’t seen each other in over a year. The flip side is we can’t do much correction or work on in-depth material since most tablet or laptop screen sizes don’t allow for us to see clear details. Master Harding leads the class, so we keep him enlarged on the screen to help us all follow along. It’s a useful alternative for the moment to keep us training together and maintain the dojo “ambiance” despite being apart.
LikeLiked by 1 person