Pad drills, hitting stuff is good – 1/31/09 – Saturday Karate class

Sensei Plocharczyk had us work on some contact drills.

Hit the pad…

I have always felt that we do not hit thing enough and Sensei Plocharczyk felt the same way today.  We spent the entire class hitting pads with a partner.

We started with simple drills like reverse punch.  Next we worked on using the outside edge of our hand to strike the pad.  After that came hammer fist and we finished up with elbow strikes.

All of these movements are extremely powerful and when the hips are behind the moves, they feel deadly.

It was an excellent class and I hope we have more like these in the future.

Focus on the pad – 1/17/08 – Saturday Karate class

Sensei Plocharczyk gave us a good kicking class today.

Hit the pad not your partner…

We started out with a drill where our partner hold a focus mitt and we do a front leg roundhouse kick.  Next came from leg roundhouse followed with a rear leg roundhouse.  The next drill was front leg hook kick and rear leg hook kick, which was much harder than the other two drills.

Conditioning drills…

Sensei had us work on some conditioning drills.  For one drill, Sensei had us put or focus mitt under our chest and do pushups.  Next came a drills where one partner did a pushup on the focus mitt, then picked it up with one hand and passed it across to the other partner and he or she did a push up.  We did 20 each of those.

After that came some partial pushups.  We started with a hold in the top position, next in the middle position and the next our chest was about two inches off the ground.  We held each postion for 15 to 30 seconds.

The final movement was, lay on our back, bend one leg and keep the other straight, put the foot of the bent foot in our partners hand and hold up our body with the strength of that leg and just our shoulders in the ground.  It was all core work and a really good exercise.