Shotokanplanet.org

This is a log of my journey to Shotokan Karate Shodan and beyond.

Archives for February 2008

Saturday Karate class – 2/23/08 – Sparring drills but a little different.

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Today, Sensei Gatch was away at a tournament in Florida so Sensei Plocharczyk trained us.

We started out with some partner sparring drills.  The first drill was some simple shift in, jab and reverse punch and then shift out movements.  Next we did the same thing but as we moved out, our partner tried to counter with a reverse punch.  Now along those same lines but different, we did the same jab and reverse punch attack, then our partner would counter with the reverse punch but then we would curve our body and hit them with a backfist the jaw.  The idea was to bend our body so that their reverse punch could not reach us but our backfist could still reach them.  The different part is that we are always told to shift away and not curve our body like this but this is really and effective move especially for self defense purposes.  We spent a good amount of time working on that movement before moving on.

Next, we did a movement where our partner threw a right hand jodan front punch, we then blocked with our right hand, stepped through, put our right hand on their right shoulder,  put our front leg behind them but hip to hip, grabbed their belt and in a circular movement, bumped their hip with ours and took them down to the ground.  The key to this movement is using the hip power.  By bumping their hip, it takes their balance away and allows the momentum to carry them around and too the ground for a good pounding or stomp.

We finished up class working on some breakfalls.  Back when I was in Aikido, we practiced break falls all the time since most of our movements ended with one of us on the floor.  I was still able to do them fairly well even after 15 years has gone by.

It was good class.

Friday Karate class – 2/22/08 – New kicking drills.

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This was one of the harder classes that I recall in some time.  This wasn’t so much mentally hard but it was physically hard.

Sensei Noia had all of us get a pad.  We put the pad on the floor, knelt down and then put our left knee on it.  From this position, we stood up and threw a front snap kick then put our same knee back down on the pad.  We did this 10 times on each side.  We then did a roundhouse kick from the same starting position.  We then moved the pad and did the same thing without it, being sure to put our knee down easily.  Putting my knee down easily was much easier said than done for me.

The next movement, again from the floor starting position was front snap kick, side thrust kick and back kick.  pad, bend back leg, stand and kick. both front and roundhouse.

During the class, we had some conditioning movements.  The first being clockwise pushups.  We started with a pushup at the 12 0’clock position and kept doing them, moving our upper body around in a circle, until we returned to the same 12 o’clock position that we started at.  We then did the same thing but this time counter clockwise.  We also did a drill where we lay on our stomachs and tried to kick our butts with our heels.  We ended up doing 50 reps each leg.  After that came a lying bicycle movement where we lay on our back, raise our upper and lower body off the flow and move our legs as if we are pedaling a bike.

We then finished things up with some partner drills.  Our partner would punch, we would block then punch and our partner would block with the same hand he or she punched with and then we would do the same.  It is a little tough to get coordinated with the movement at first but it gets better the more you do it.

Very hard but good.

Thursday Karate class – 2/21/08 – Squeeze your heels together and stillness.

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Again, class was filled with a lot of good information.

We did a lot of kihon with our normal kicks but then we did something a little different.  Sensei Cieplik had us get into a front stance and then throw a front snap kick, then pivot a half turn to the left and throw a reverse punch, then repeat for a total of four times.  We then did the same movements but in the opposite direction.  The object of this drill was for us to regain our balance after the kick and then throw the punch.

When doing our normal warm kicks, with front kick and front punch Sensei stressed the importance of kicking and punching to the middle.

Sensei had us work on moving sideways in a horse stance, normally we kick with this drill, but paying attention to our feet and he had us reach with the leading leg then settle into the stance in a salad bowl motion.  The salad bowl analogy is the way the body should be moving.  Sensei made a very important comment that really struck me about the horse stance.  He said to try and squeeze your heels together when in a horse stance.  Just doing this made my stance so much strong and I was able to get lower than in the past.  It just goes to show, even after close to four years of studying Karate, there is always something to learn.

We spent some time working on kata.  We did a couple each of Heian Shodan and Heian Nidan and three Tekki Shodan and one of each up to the first ki-ai of Jion and Bassai Dai.  Sensei asked how do you improve your kata if you cannot move any faster or stronger?  His point is that if you reach your limit for speed and power how can you still improve your kata.  His answer was very simple yet I certainly did not expect it.  He said that if you reach the limit on speed and power, you need to practice to be stiller.  The more still that you are means that your movements will look stronger and faster if you start, or I guess end also, from a motionless state.

Sensei has also made a comment that I might have mentioned before.  He says to make kata your own.  If you try too hard to look or move like someone else, your kata will never be yours.  This point really hit home.  I have always tried to make my kata look like others who are younger and much faster than me but I have never did a kata the way that I wanted too.  When I try to move too fast, the quality of my technique really falls off.  This doesn’t mean to do kata without the basic fundamentals but it means to do the kata within your ability and don’t worry about looking like someone else when doing it, look like yourself.