Fast but pause – 3/23/10 – Tuesday Karate class

Sensei Noia had us work on our stance fundamentals today.

Move fast but pause….

Sensei had us start out in blocking front stance.  From there, we slowly moved forward into a blocking stance again but with extra attention to stance consistency.  The idea was to move from stance to stance with the proper stance lenght and width along with hip position.

We did the same movement with our hips forward, like in a punching stance.  Then we did blocking stance then pushing off the back heel into a punching stance.  Again, all of these were slow movements with consistency and perfect form.

For the next drill, we stepped forward and punched, then stepped back and block, then stepped forward and punched again.  The idea was to move very fast between movements but pause before we move again.  Instead of rushing into the movements with less than perfect form, moving fast into each move and pausing made us work on explosion from dead stop to the next movement.

Next we stepped forward into a back stance, then stepped into a front stance, then stepped back into a back stance.  The transition from back to the front stance and front to back stance felt much slower then moving from the same stance to stance movements.

Next, we did three movements, one forward, one backward and one forward again.  This time we had to do a different stance for each of the three moves.  We were able to use front stance, back stance and horse stance this time.

Switch your feet Heian Shodan….

This was neat drill.  We did Heian Shodan but with three moves for each move instead of one.  For example, the first move is downward block to the left with left leg in front but instead of moving into move two, the front punch, we changed our feet and blocked with right hand and leg in front, then switched back to the left leg and hand in front.  The pattern was block, switch feet, block with other arm, switch feet and  block.  Instead of 21 moves, we ended up doing 63 moves each time we did Heian Shodan.

Hit those pads and rattle my brain….

We spent the last few minute of class hitting the pads.  Our partner held the pad and we were able to use any open hand, closed hand then elbow techniques.  For example, back hand, knife hand or ridge hand for open hand techniques.  For close hand, we could use hammer fist, back fist or punches.  For elbow techniques, we could use back elbow strike or front elbow strike.

I worked with one of my good friends, who hits like a sledge hammer, and we rattled each others teeth.  Sensei Noia wanted us to hit with the idea if our partner did not have a pad, we would seriously hurt or do worse to them.  I am pretty certain that my partner and myself would have done some serious damage to each other if we didn’t have those pads in front of us.  The elbow strikes in particular felt extremely effective.

It was a great class and good end to this session.

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More kicks – 3/19/10 – Friday Karate class

I am starting to wonder if there is a push to improve our kicking abilities in the club.  I did more kicks this week then ever before.  I know that I need them but my hips are saying bad things to me when I have to complex movements, like walking for example.

Start making those kicks better now for the upcoming exams….

Sensei Brien had us spend 80% of the class working on kicking drills.  After our warm up, we started in a horse stance.  From there, we did many punches, double punches and triple punches.  Next, we turned to the left from a horse stance into a front stance, threw a reverse punch and then turned back into a horse stance and threw a punch with the opposite hand.  We then turned to the right and did the same thing.  Sensei wanted us to open up our hips.

Next came the kicks.  Not in any particular orders, we did slow motion low front snap kick followed by slow motion high front snap kick.  The idea was to push the hips forward and work the legs.  It was successful.

For roundhouse kicks, we stood facing front, picked the kicking leg up to the side, turned our body and pointed our kicking knee forward, kicked and then turn back so that we were facing front again.  We did the this movement slowly.

We did double height side thrust kicks, first to the knee and then to the belt or higher.  After that came front snap kick, side thrust kick and back kick.  Sensei sad to make sure that you look before doing a back kick at the exam.  For kicks, we finished up with some side snap kick drills.

Crazy hands….

We spent the last part of class working on some sparring drills.  The idea was for the defender to move their hands in some crazy but loose patterns to easily deflect our opponents punching attacks.  The movement of the hands is used to distract the attacker, deflect their attack and allow them to be counter attacked easily.

This article was originally posted on www.shotokanplanet.org. Any reproduction on any other site is prohibited and a violation of copyright laws.