Irasshaimase!

In case you're wondering ... that means "Welcome" in Japanese. This week's workout is karate, and we were given a very warm welcome at Dojos Family Martial Arts in Ankeny.

Neither Sonya nor I expected this to be a killer workout. Fun, yes. New, absolutely. But grueling? No. Boy were we clueless.

Master Instructor Jeff Wilber was awesome to work with. He is a high energy, super positive guy who made our workout really fun, even if we were dying during parts of it. "We like to have fun, exciting classes that are very positive," says Master Wilber, "this is not your traditional karate class!"

We started with a pretty basic warmup... some running, knee strikes, kicks and arm swings to get the blood pumping. Then the small target bags were added to the mix. Pretty soon we were doing full kicks down into lunges while punching the bag on the floor. It didn't take long for us to break a sweat during this drill and it was the first one! Master Wilbur uses the "Tabata Protocol" - you do twenty seconds of high intensity exercise, followed by ten seconds of rest. In this class, we did three rounds of each exercise. What made this really brutal was the way we constantly went back and forth between cardio work and ab work - and a lot of ab work that was really full body work. There were a few plank exercises that had every muscle in our bodies begging for mercy! All the while Master Wilber was screaming things like, "Your attitude determines your altitude!" and "If it hurts just smile more! big smiles!"

And you know what? We WERE smiling. This class was a blast and we were sorry when it ended. We worked really hard but had a really good time doing it. It's easy to understand why Master Wilber says, "I recommend martial arts for everyone between the ages of 4 and 104 ... anyone can do martial arts training and benefit from it."

If you want to give martial arts a try, contact Master Wilber at 963-9989 and check out the website at www.mydojos.com.

Have a great week!
EEK
Erin.Kiernan@whotv.com