100

Been a while since I've actually, really trained. Tonight only one person showed up for class, so I figured it was high time to use the floor space. We ran through all 20 kata, 5 times each. Took a good 1.5 hours, with short breaks every 5 kata. 100 kata. Not nearly as bad as I thought it would be. I guess the last time I actually did that was several years ago. I felt relaxed and fairly smooth, and even managed to get a decent kata once or twice; not a bad ration out of 100.
I've also started noticing more and more how similar all the kata are to each other. I reckon this is a good thing, since the basic point of all the kata is to teach the fundamental essence of the style. If there were 20 different things the style would be a mess, or at worst a big amalgam. As it is, it appears more and more to be a coherent, single...I dunno know the word. Strategy maybe. Essence is good too. Maybe theory is better?
Anyway ran through all the kata, and even though I threw out my back a few days ago (total dad moment: tweaked my back lifting Tonchan and her stroller up a short stair case. Doh!) I actually felt pretty good, not tense at all. Maybe because I was being careful not to try too hard and stress out my back. So my hurt back actually made my practice better!
In English every cloud has a silver lining. In Japanese, all things are like Saio's horse: "Ningen banji saio-ga uma"