Roundhouse kicks and combinations – 8/14/08 – Thursday Karate class

Sensei Wail ran a really good class tonight.

Lots of roundhouse kicks…

We spent a lot of time working on roundhouse kicks.  Sensei had us start with opening our hips up by doing roundhouse kicks from a front stance but in slow motion.  We started by bringing the back leg up first, then pivoting around to the front and throwing the kick.

We then worked on some combinations with roundhouse kick and reverse punch.  Sensei added a little twist and instead of us just stepping down into our front stance after the kick, he had us step into a cat stance first, then push forward into the front stance and throw the reverse punch.  He wanted us to working on our forward motion, pushing our hips forward, instead of just falling into the front stance.  This was a complex movement compared to doing the same type of movement when doing front snap kick combinations.

Hit the pad but use the hips and the back heel…

In order to make us better understand that pushing motion from the hips, Sensei had us partner up and work on hitting the pad from the hips instead of the upper like most of us do.  He had us stand a very small distance from our partner with our hips open and our back leg bent and then straighten the back leg, push off the back heel, close the hips and throw the punch.  My lack of ankle flexibility wasn’t helping me too much but when I was able to push off the back heel my punches were much more powerful and connected.  The look on my wife’s face when I hit the pad was enough to tell me when I did the movement the correct way.

Kata from start to end…

Sensei Wail wanted us to try and apply the hip and heel connection to our kata so we started with Heian Shodan.  We then followed it up with Heian Nidan, Heian Sandan, Hiean Yondan, Heian Godan, Jion and Bassai Dai.  I could certainly feel the connection when I did my strikes the correct way but the percentage of correct moves was pretty low.