Archives for August 2007

After reanalyzing my Karate workouts, I am going to train with more focus and when I train I train for real or not at all.  When I day for real, I mean with power, speed and focus unless I am working on something specific like my stance training.

Todays workout was kata.  I did one each of:

• Heian Shodan
• Heian Nidan
• Heian Sandan
• Heian Yondan
• Heian Godan
• Tekki Shodan
• Jion

Doing my kata with full power and speed really helped me feel a difference and even after only doing those few kata I was spent.  I feel that the slow motion, lazy stuff that I was doing before was tricking me in to thinking that I was working out.  I had my son help me out with Jion since I only know about 90% of all the moves.

Class started with a warm up that consisted of shifting and throwing light reverse punches at our partner to get the blood flowing and to prepare us for what was to come next…..

We did a lot sparring drills. I guess a lot is an understatement.

We started out, shifting in and out, with our partner while one of us blocked and the other attacked. First, it was light reverse punches much like our warm up, although my wife ended up moving in and running right in to a pretty hard reverse punch from me. I always pull my punches but with me shifting in and her shifting out, it was a solid hard punch.

Next, we kept shifting but instead of using punches as our attacks, we were able to use kicks. We could use roundhouse and hook kicks to the body and head. For some odd reason, my hook kick was better than usual. I have not had much success with hook kicks in the past but they were working pretty well. My right leg roundhouse was working well too, at least with my right leg. Both shuffle up front leg roundhouse and back leg was hitting pretty accurate.

We worked on some free sparring drills but could only use single moves and no combinations. The main theme of the class was moving in to attack and getting out so that our partner could not counter attack. I have always had problems retreating after I attack but I am starting to move to the side, or at least am trying to move to the side to get out of way. Moving sideways is working better but I still do not do it automatically.

We then did a drill where one of us put our front foot on a line on the floor and our partner would attack and we had to block without moving off the line. We did this drill non stop for 30 seconds with the attacker throwing as many punches and kicks as possible.

For fun, I guess it’s fun for some, we did burpees for 30 seconds while one group free sparred. I have done those before so they weren’t too hard but after close to and hour of shifting and sparring, I was starting to get tired after 20 seconds or so. I also worked my legs at the gym earlier that day so my quadriceps were tired already.

I almost forgot, we did a lot of partner sit ups. At one point, our Sensei wanted us to 50 but I could only get to 20 or so since my abdominals cramped up. Doing roman chair sit ups earlier at the gym, my abs were spent.

Overall, class was great and I think that my sparring skills are starting to improve at least a little.