Private kata – 9/7/08 – Saturday Karate class.

My wife and I forgot our sparring gear at home so we got to spend an entire class working on Bassai Dai with Sensei Gatch.

We started class with a rough warm up.  We jogged around the gym, then Sensei Gatch had us do 15 burpies and then 10 push up / sit ups.  Push up / sit ups are where we did a single push up, then turned over on our back and did a single sit up, rinse and repeat.  After the burpies, those were really hard.

Details, details…

We spent close to 45 minutes working on one kata.  Sensei had us do each movement and he corrected us after each one.

I have to following things to work on:

• More hip rotation on the first few moves with the outward and inward blocks.
• Strike between the chest and shoulder area before the punch with block and punch with block.
• Reach to the front before the low side thrust kick and try to bring my knee up to my chest.
• Get the hips around when changing direction after the front punch into the groin strike.
• Keep the elbow tucked into my side when doing the double punches near the end of the kata.

It’s a lot of things to work on but all stuff that I am doing now that I wasn’t before.  I really like Bassai Dai for some reason and I am hopeful that this class will help me like it more.