Archives for September 2007

I thought that Tuesday class was torture, it was almost nothing next to todays class!

The goal was to torture our legs and make us hold our stances for what seemed like forever.

We started in a horse stance and punched 100 times. Next came a front stance and 50 punches on each leg. Next came more horse stances and punches for another 100. Then came a bunch of side thrust kick. Sensei had us hold the wall with one hand and throw a low, medium and high side thrust kick for at least 50 each leg. My hips actually started to cramp after the 20 plus kicks. After that, back in to the horse stance and 100 more punches.

My legs and shoulders were so tired that I could hardly pick my leg up or throw a punch with any power near the end of class. My mind was still trying but my body was not at that point.

We also did at least three or four sets of 30 crunches and a bunch of push ups. Doing the sit ups and push ups was a nice rest before moving on to the next set of torture. My mind is a little blurry but I think there were some squats somewhere in there for good measure.

I almost forgot, we finished up with two kata. I did Tekki Shodan for both of them but I could hardly raise my legs when stepping in to each move.

Even though it was extremely hard, I feel that classes like those will help prepare us for our upcoming rank exams and tournament.

Homework! I had to type my homework early here so that I don’t forget what Sensei gave us to work on each day.

Starting in a front stance, we do a rear leg front snap kick, hold after the kick, then  bend back leg, move in to cat stance while bending the front leg, “pet the mouse” or keep the weight on the back leg and lightly and gently reach forward with front foot, move in to front stance and throw a front punch while keeping the hips straight.

No that I have that written down, here is the lowdown on class.

We started off with our normal warm up doing many kicks and finally, I think my roundhouse kicks are starting to look like roundhouse kicks instead of just throwing my legs out in to thin air like not too long ago.

We spent most of the class working on stances.  Even though we did a lot of punches and blocks the real meat of the lesson was our foot work and attention to blocking the groin area with our legs.  Sensei made up pay extra attention to brining the knees together when moving both forward and back.

We spent a good amount of time working on our homework in class so that we would all understand what Sensei was looking for.

One the same note, we spent some time working on keeping the groin protected while turning from on direction to another.  When moving backward, we would turn our back foot the direction that we wanted to end up facing while bringing the front leg in to what was similar to a cat stance, bringing the knees together and then pushing the front leg out to move in to a front stance.

Oddly enough, I don’t recall any kicking drills except for the warm ups.

We ended up finishing class with some kata.  We did Heian Shodan but with a little twist, Sensei had us do the kata with the moves that we worked on in the drills.  When paying attention to protecting the groin area, it does slow the kata down a bit but it really made me focus on each move and my technique.  I also felt much more powerful for some reason and I assume it was related to the extra focus.

Sensei made a comment about kata and the way it is performed today.  His point was that it used to take almost twice as long to perform the kata as it does today.  He mentioned that competition kata is done very fast where as in the past, kata was done with a two count after each move that showed power and kime.  Instead of the blinding speed that many competitors have today between moves, after each move there a pause or pose as Sensei said.

Class was very good.