Luckily, my mind was with me today and the problems that I had on Tuesday didn’t follow me here.
Sensei Cieplik had us start with our normal warm up and then we moved into a few mind benders. One such movement was front leg front snap kick but set it down behind. The movement itself isn’t hard but getting the brain to do it was.
FOCUS….
Sensei Cieplik shared some interesting Karate concepts with us today. Sensei brought in a flashlight to demonstrate what he was explaining. The idea is, when you are fighting or sparring, you have a target or focus point like a tight beam from a flashlight. When you focus on that point, your energy or attack has already gone there and back before you physically throw it.
To demonstrate, Sensei had us get a partner and had each of us stand across the dojo from each other. We then faced our partner and got into a front stance. We then moved toward each other, throwing a front punch but while keeping total focus on our partner. It was much easier said than done, I had a hard time keeping a straight face since my partner is also a good friend of mine but when I was able to keep the focus, it felt awesome. I would think that if one of us hit the other with the focus, there was no question that it would have hurt a lot or worse. That type of focused power felt different in such as way that I thought that my arms were actually longer than they are. It actually felt as if I would punch through someone instead of just hitting them.
This is another concept that you have to wrap the brain around.
Kata with Focus…
After spending a good amount of time working on the focus drill, Sensei asked us to do our kata with the same focus that we had in the previous drill. I found this much harder since I did not have a person in front of me to focus on. This type of concentration is going to take some time and lot of practice.
We worked on a couple of the Heian katas, Jion, Bassai Dai and Kanku Dai.
Sensei gave us a good tip about Jion that I never thought of before. When doing the three moves with the stomp and downward forearm strike, we are supposed to turn the wrist of the striking hand. Just that little movement makes those powerful moves feel even stronger.
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