Saturday Karate class – 5/10/08 – Timed kata both fast and slow.

Sensei Gatch said that he was going to work on our kata, kihon and conditioning.  He wasn’t kidding either.

We started the class, running from one side of the gym to the other.  I am not sure how many times we did it but it must have been five.  We then did some low walks across the gym both forward and backward.  That got the class warmed up.

Next came what felt like endless kihon.  We did our combinations with almost no rest for about 15 minutes.

After that came the really interesting part.  Sensei had us start with Heian Shodan but we had to do the entire kata in 20 seconds and at least try to make it look like an entire kata.  We then moved on to Heian Nidan, Heian Shodan, Heian Sandan and Heian Yondan.  We ended up doing a couple of the katas more than once since it we didn’t make it under the 20 second mark.  My mind couldn’t think fast enough and I am sure that I missed some moves in a few of the katas.

After that, Sensei had us work on our own rank kata.  He wanted the third kyu’s to do Jion near the time it should take to do the kata.  He said that it should take 1 minute and 15 seconds.  The first time we did it, the last person to finish we me at about 53 seconds.  During the next kata, I finished last again at the 1 minute 8 second mark.  I really had to slow down my mind to do it that slowly.

Great class but really hard.