Shotokanplanet.org

This is a log of my journey to Shotokan Karate Shodan and beyond.

Archives for March 2009

Point with the back hand – 3/12/09 – Thursday Karate class

by Leave a Comment

I had to take the last week off from classes because of a nasty cold but today was my first day back at it and it felt pretty good.

Have I mentioned how much I like working on Kihon before?  I am sure that I have and tonight was exceptionally likable.

Kihon…

Sensei Cieplik had us work on a lot of kihon drills today.  We spent some time working on the standard drills such as moving forward and back with front punch, the various block and punch combination moving forward and back along with moving forward front snap kick with front punch.

Sensei seemed to be paying extra attention to the moving forward and back with front punch.  I believe that he was looking for connection.  By connection I mean, connection to the floor, using the correct muscles of the legs, core and upper back.  When I have connection and I am doing this simple movement correctly, it is one of my favorites.  It just feel good.

Advanced kihon…

Sensei gave a more advanced drill to the 1st kyu and black belts.  He did say that the 2nd kyu’s and below could try it so I did.  This move felt really natural to me even though it is supposed to be more complex.  He had us do moving forward and backward reverse punch, with rising block and reverse punch.  There is a good amount of hip movement in this drill and it felt that a lot of power was generated on each move.

Point with the back hand…

I felt that this deserved it’s own heading.  Sensei had us work on back stance with knife hand block, front snap kick and nukite.  We have often done this movement in the past but Sensei said one thing today that made it totally different to me.  He noticed that when some of us were kicking or doing the nukite, we were pulling back on the draw hand and showing our intention.  He said to “point with the back hand.”  He meant for us to point at our opponent with the finger of the draw hand while we were kicking.  By doing that, it make the nukite come without pulling it back first.  Just thinking about it totally changed (improved) the execution for me.

Kata…

Sensei had us spend a lot of time working on kata.  We did at least 10 or more kata’s starting with heian Shodan.  Again, Sensei was looking for connection.  We also did heian Nidan, Heian Sandan, Heian Yondan, Jion and Bassai Dai.  I liked to think that I am pretty good shape but after doing all of those kata’s I could hardly breath.  I think Jion took the most out of me but I might have been trying too hard by tensing too many muscles that I didn’t need to tense.

This was an excellent class and I am glad that I felt well enough to take it.

Sparring is tiring – 3/3/09 – Tuesday Karate class

by Leave a Comment

Sensei Noia had us start this class with some free sparring drills as a warm up.  This lasted for close to 20 minutes and I was pretty much spent by the time we finished.

Focus mitt time…

After our sparring warm up, we moved on to some focus drills.  Sensei Noia had us get our focus mitts and we worked on various target drills.  One of us would hold the mitt in front of our stomach for a reverse punch or front snap kick or on the side of our body or head for a roundhouse or hook kick.  As we got going, Sensei had us move the focus mitt at greater speeds to get our partner to react faster.

Self defense…

We spent the rest of the class working on knife hand block self defense drills.  These drills confuse me more often than not.  When we do the drill to the inside of our partners punch, I get it but when moving to the outside of the punch, I was having issues.  I guess I need some practice with this drill.

Better horse stance means better Karate – 3/2/09 – Monday Karate class

by Leave a Comment

Sometimes it is not what is said, it is how it is said.  Today was one of those enlightening moments that don’t come around often enough.

Good tension…

Sensei had us start class working on our stances by going through some of the Heian katas.  When doing a blocking stance, Sensei wants us to have our leg tension to the outside and when doing a strike our tension needs to be to the inside.  When the tension is on the outside, the back leg is slightly bent and the back hip is open and in a striking stance, the back leg is straight, the knee is facing down and the hip is closed.  We did Heian Shodan and Heian Nidan paying all attention to the tension of our legs and the position of our hips.  Sensei also had us make sure that we pushed the pelvis up and tightened the ab muscles at the end of each move.

Many good things can come from a good horse stance…

Sensei Brien shared an interesting lesson tonight.  He had made a comment that if your horse stance is good, your front stance will be good, your back stance will be good, your roundhouse kicks will be better, your side thrust kicks and your Karate will be better in general.  There is a lot of good things related to horse stances.

Sensei had us work on a tough horse stance drill.  We moved into a horse stance and then stepped to the side and brought our feet together and then pushed back into the horse stance.  Sensei wanted us to push into the stance and lock our muscles to stop ourselves.  When doing the horse stance, Sensei said that our gi pants should have a line across the front when the proper tension is applied, the knees need to be pushed out as far as possible and the gluteus and ab muscles need to be engaged fully for the stance to be correct.

This explanation about tightening the gluteus muscles really hit home for me.  I have been told this in about 10 different ways over the last few years but this small little change in words gave me what I needed to finally get it.