Sensei Noia wanted us to work on some shifting basics today.
The band Elwood, the band….
We started with a partner and an elastic band. We faced other while one partner held the handles and the other wrapped the band around our waist. From the point, the partner with band around their waist would shift backward and the other would hold the band. We would shift back and forth and then when Sensei counted, we would shift back twice and then shift in and reverse punch our partner. I was working with my friend Robert and we were really hit each other very hard. There’s only a handful of people that I can hit this hard and Robert is one of them who enjoys returning the favor.
After we finished the band drills, we did some free sparring using the same techniques that we worked on while using the bands. Shift out twice with our partner and then shift in an punch.
Non-stop kicks….
We finished up class with 60 seconds of non stop kicks. One partner would throw continuous kicks while the other tried to block all of them.  We then switched off and it was our partners turn.  This was an extremely tiring drill but a lot of fun.
I was using the x-block like that in Heian Yondan and Heian Godan to block most of the kicks and it works really well. It’s always neat to be able to apply movements from katas when sparring, in my opinion.
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