On the heels – 7/16/09 – Thursday Karate class

Today, Sensei Cieplik has us work on keeping connection with our heels when doing our movements.

Turn on the heels and push from the hips…

We started class with the normal warm up and then started doing some basic kihon drills.

Early in the class, we started working on Heian Shodan but with extra attention to our turns.  Instead of turning using our shoulders, Sensei had us turn on our back heel into a cat stance and then push our front leg forward to finish the movement.  Turning into a cat stance does a couple of things, it makes us stay connected with the back leg and moving from the cat stance to the front make us drive forward from our hips.  This does slow the kata down for me but if makes it feel much more powerful and accurate for some reason.

We spent the rest of the class working on all of the katas trying to stay connected to the floor while doing them.  We started with Heian Shodan and when all the way to Jion.

In the crater – 7/14/09 – Tuesday Karate class

This was one of those classes that I and most of the class won’t forget.  Sensei Noia had us train on the hill outside the dojo.  It’s more like a steep crater than a hill to me though.

If you move too fast, you will fall down….

We started out with few sprints up the hill and then a slow jog back down.  The key is to make sure that you don’t run too fast when going downhill or you will end up at the bottom.

Next came low walks, not only up but down too.  Going down is extremely hard and you have to make sure that you place your front foot in the right place, which is hard then it sounds but possible.

Next came jumping kicks uphill.  The front snap kicks weren’t too bad but roundhouse and hook kicks were almost impossible for me.

We also did jumping squats up the hill but after just a few, I ended up sprinting up the hill since me legs just would not leg me do the squats.

Basics and kata…

Next came moving forward and back with front stance and backstance doing various strikes and blocks up and down.  Getting into a low stance was almost impossible because of the steep angle.

We did kata from Heian Shodan all the way to Tekki Shodan.

Uneven kumite….

We finished up with some kumite on the hill.  Sensei told us that we could only use hand techniques since kicks on the hill would have been a little risky.

It was an awesome class but extremely tough.  I hope we do this again.