Karate on the outside – 7/22/08 – Tuesday Karate class.
A serious warm up…
Sensei Noia had us do a really hard warm up tonight. We ran back and forth across the gym at least 10 times. Next, we did butt kicks, where your run across the gym trying to kick your backside with your feet. Next, we did low walks both forward and back across the gym. For good measure, Sensei had us jog across the gym four more times.
Taking our Karate outside…
I am not talking about a metaphor here, Sensei had us go outside to do our Karate on the hill behind the dojo. We have not done this for sometime and the last time I remember having class outside was maybe two years ago.
We started sprinting up the hill for a fast warm up. Next, we went down the hill, squatted down and then jumped forward until we got to the top of the hill.
After that we did a front stance at the bottom. As Sensei counted, we went back up the hill doing the block or punch of our choice. Moving up the hill was a challange since you had to squeeze with the front leg to pull ourselves up the hill.
The next movement was from a front stance, we did front snap kicks moving up the hill. This hill is not just a gentle slope, it is a fairly steep climb and trying to balance while kicking is not an easy task. We then did a similar move where we went back up the hills doing a kick of our choice. I did both front snap kick and roundhouse kicks for that drill.
We also did pushups with our feet higher than our hands. Sensei had us do 20 reps and it wasn’t too hard for me.
Next came kata. We all did Heian Shodan together while trying to keep from falling down the hill. It was not easy and the down hill movements and back stances were very hard. Sensei then had us do our own kata. I did Bassai Dai and it didn’t seem too bad. I wasn’t able to use full power but I didn’t fall down either.
We finished our outside Karate by doing low walks all the way from the far top of the hill back to the dojo door. We had to do at least 30 each leg and coming up the steep hill was torture.
Back inside…
Once we got back in the dojo, Sensei Noia had us do our own belt kata. Since we were on the flat floor again, it should be easy, right? I could hardly move my legs and the floor felt so sticky for some reason but I did my kata. I still have some things work out in Bassai Dai. Except for the last three moves, I can do alomst the whole thing now.
We then got a partner and worked on some one-step sparring. Instead of the normal punch block, Sensei Noia wanted us to use the movements that we have been working with for the last few weeks. My partner and I worked on movements from our belt kata, Bassai Dai. These movements are starting to come easier than before and feel almost automatice at times. We spent about 15 minutes going back and forth with our attacks and block and counters before class ended.
It was an excelelnt class.
Guest Sensei and some bunkai drills – 7/19/08 – Saturday Karate class.
Today was an interesting day. We had Sensei Brien as our guest Sensei today.
Three step sparring with a twist…
Sensei had us partner up. One of us did the blocking and the other did the attacks. We started with our partner throwing a jodan front punch. We then stepped back and did some simple drills with inward, outward and rising block.
After we warmed up Sensei had us do some different blocking movements. The first movement was stepping back and blocking with a knife hand. We brought our hand up to our ear and blocked the same way we do in the kata but instead we were in a front stance.
The next movement was similar but we brought our knife hand block around from the outside much like an inward block. The idea was to redirect our opponents punch away from us. We turned our hand the opposite way and used to back of it to redirect the punch.
The next movement was a downward palm strike block. Our opponent threw a chudan front punch and as it was coming toward us, we would do a downward type palm strike and hit their hand out of the way. It is similar to a downward block but it is more of a direct downward motion instead of a cross body motion.
We spent the entire class working on movements like these and I am surprised how quickly our hour long class went by.
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