Saturday Karate class – 3/22/08 – Kata, sparring and pain.

I guess the title is a little deceiving. There was some pain involved but not bad pain.

Sensei Plocharczyk started class with a different drill. He had everyone lay on the floor, the person on the far end would stand up, shift in and out between each person on the floor and then start a new line and lay down again. After we did that, he had us get in the push up position. From there, he had us do 10 push ups, then hold in the half push up position for what seemed like an eternity. We then did five more push ups and then held the half position again and then finished up with five more push ups. My chest and arms didn’t have any trouble but my hands really hurt while doing them for some reason.

We then did kata. Sensei had all of us do kata while he watched each belt rank group do their own belt kata. When I got to my group, after I did Jion, he said that I need to rotate my hips more in the rising block with reverse punch. This is a common correction that I have been getting so I really need to get back to basics to try and correct this problem.

We then partnered up for three step and one step sparring. For some reason, my mind was off for the last couple of days. I blocked the jodan punches in the three step with inward blocks for some reason so I guess my mind really wasn’t at it’s peak. I had less trouble with my one-step but made a mistake when blocking the roundhouse kick by shifting too far to the outside and not being able to return a counter.

We then moved on to sparring drills. This felt much to me today. I didn’t any problems and for the first time in a while, I felt that my sparring was getting better. My shifting felt lighter and my hands were moving very fast. My fakes were working well and I found it pretty easy to score on my partner.

We finished up with some more conditioning work. Sensei had us hold our sparring headgear above our heads and do low walks across the gym. When we got to the far side, we did low walks back again. Each time Sensei said run, we would go to the far side and then do low walks back again.

Some of the conditioning drills were painful but it was good pain.