Sensei Brien spent most of the class working on preparing us for our upcoming rank exam. This was the last of our make up classes that were two hours long.
Kihon like you mean it…
Sensei had us start out with the usual basics, moving forward and back with front punches, sanbon zuki and blocks and counters.
It got interesting when we started working on our kicking drills. When we were doing our side thrust kicks, Sensei had do two. For example, we started in a horse stance, we then stepped across and did not one but two side thrust kicks and then pulled our leg back until Sensei told us to set our foot down. He made a really good point, if you can do two good kicks in a row, you can certainly always do one good kick. This really made a lot of sense to me and I hope to incorporate this into my training outside of the dojo.
Kata, any questions?…
After we finished our Kihon, Sensei Brien had us work on our kata. He had us all do our own kata and then gave us a chance to ask him for advice on our kata. After his advice, we were able to do the kata again and again trying to incorporate what he shared with us. My question was how to properly execute fifth and fourth move from the end of Bassai Dai. It is the low kick blocks. I was having a hard time transisioning from the moves and Sensei said that I should turn on the my heels which seems to work pretty well for me.
One-step…
I forgot to bring my sparring gear to class so my wife and I ended up working on our one-step sparring together until class ended.
I have been reading your blog for several months. Like you, I am very in to my karate training. Unfortunately, I have become disenchanted with my club and its belt testing process. When one of our students fails or receives a re-test there is no other feedback given. I have seen this on several occasions. The students and their parents are discouraged from calling the instructor and the instructor openly mocks parents that ask about their child’s results. The same is true for passing exams but the students don’t get upset if they pass. How does your club handle this?
I am sorry about the late reply.
In our club, we are able to call or ask our Sensei to get our results from the exam book. It sometimes takes a while to get them but we do. The only thing is, we do not get very detailed information. There are close to 7000 students in our club and much of the feedback in the exam book is as simple as “stances are too high, not enough hip rotation or kicks are too low” to name a few.
Even though it is not a lot of feedback, it is feedback and I am very fortunate that my Sensei’s know me well enough, from the classes I take, to elaborate more on what is written in the exam book.
I would most certainly like more detailed information about my results but I am glad that I do get the feedback that they give me.
I hope this answers your question. If you need more input, please let me know.