Sensei Brien, along with Sensei Cieplik, often say good kihon make good Karate. If your want good kata or good kumite, your kihon needs to be good. Sensei has mentioned before that without good kihon, your kata will never be much more than memorized movements much like a dance. He often said that he could teach any good athlete the moves for a kata but they would not be doing Karate because of they do not understand the kihon or basics.
Working toward good kihon….
Sensie had us spend most of the class working on kihon drills. We did blocks and strikes back and forth across the dojo. We started with simple movements such as moving forward with front punch or blocks, then we moved into combination movements with block and punches and then we spent a lot of time working on our kicks. We did front snap kick, side thrust kick, back kick and roundhouse kick but with extra attention to the little details trying to make the movements perfect.
More kicks….
For the next drill, we got a partner and did front snap kick, side thrust kick and back kick. We used our partner as a support and did all three kicks.
We also worked on a roundhouse drill where we kicked each other, trying to keep our heel to our butt until we point our knee at out target and then let the kick fly. The idea was to mask that the kick is coming until it is too late for the opponent to see it.
It was a really tough class with lots of hip and leg work.
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