Thursday Karate class – 9/20/07

Our Sensei taught us so many things in this class, I am having a hard time remembering everything. I really need to bring a notebook with me to class.

We did the normal kicking warm up and then moved in to downward block with reverse punch. After about three moves Sensei said “stop”. He then had us pair up with someone near our size and then, insert suspenseful music here, he had us massage each others shoulders and neck. It seems that many of us were tensed up and he wanted us to relax so that we could move better.

After about five minutes of massage, everyone was pretty relaxed and moving much closer to way Sensei felt we should. We did the normal group of combinations and my stances felt really good. I was moving fairly fast and my hip rotation felt great.

We then worked on something old but with a new twist. We did moving forward, front snap kick with front punch. The part that made this different is Sensei told us, instead of punching straight ahead after the kick, he told us to punch down instead. This made the move very different and made it much easier for me to hit with my shin and not just my hand. It really made the punch feel much more grounded and powerful.

We then spent a good amount of time working on moving forward front punch. Sensei wanted us to work on all five parts of the movement. We worked on this before and today he made a comment that was a little different, he said to concentrate on the elbow strike. This made the punch feel much different. He also has us focus on the other parts, guarded back leg, knee sweep, shin clash and the punch, one by one and then we put all of them together.

We finished up the class with some kata. We did Heian Shodan, Heian Nidan and Heian Godan.

After class, Sensei asked if there was something wrong since my kicks were off. He said that he noticed it right away and I wasn’t extending my kicks. Oddly enough, it felt that I was buckling at my abs when throwing my kicks and my Sensei saw it.

It was a really good class.