Roundhouse kick warm up and kata bunkai – Saturday Karate class – 6/21/08

Sensei Plocharczyk gave us a very interesting class today.  He had us do some things that we never did before both during our warm up and in class.

A very different warm up – Horse stance, shuffle and roundhouse kick.

We ran around the gym for a few laps and then Sensei had us line up on one side of the gym.  He then said get into a horse stance, shuffle up to the right, throw a low side thrust kick (around knee height) across the gym to the first line about a quarter distance of the gym and back.  Then, we did the same move but threw the kick to thigh level but to the halfway line across the gym and back.  Next, the same move again but to belt level height to the three quarter line and back.  We then did one more drill all the way across the gym, throwing kicks or trying to throw them to jodan level.  This warm up sound really simple but it gave my hips an excellent warm up.  I plan on doing this drill at home to help improve my hip mobility and kicking ability.

Kata bunkai…

I am calling this kata bunkai, not because it was all parts of one kata but because it was various parts of a few different kata’s.

We stood face to face with our partner.  My partner was my wife this time,  She grabbed the top of my gi near the top of my chest below my neck with her right hand and threw a wide hay maker punch with her left hand.  I stopped the punch using my left hand with an edge hand strike to her right bicep and grabbed her arm, near the bicep with my left hand.  I then moved my right foot behind her left leg and did the dropping strike from Jion to her right arm, to break her grip where she was holding my gi.  I then slid behind her, into a horse stance with still holding her right arm, threw an elbow strike with my right arm and took her down to the floor by pushing my right hip into hers and twisting as I executed the elbow strike.

Using the edge hand strike could be from many of that kata’s where a knife hand block is used, except this movement was a strike and not a block.  The arm grab with the downward dropping strike is from Jion and Sensei said that it can be done both with the right foot on the floor like a step or brining the knee up just like in the kata.  The elbow strike while holding her is the second from the last move in Jion.

We normally do not spend a lot of time on kata application but Sensei mentioned that during the summer months, he hopes to work on some more of these types of movements.  With the exception of lying on the floor looking up, I really like it.