Archives for April 2009

Basics to see if we can advance….

Even though this is the advanced class, Sensei Cieplik always gives the group a little test at the start of each class.  He wants to make sure that we have sound fundamental kihon movements correct before he moves on to more advanced concepts.

Our warm up drills always has one particular movement where we are in a front stance, put our reverse hand out, do a front snap kick, switch our hands and step back down with a reverse punch.  Sensei watches this drill closely and expects all of us to do it with the same timing.  If we have good timing, we move on.  After our warm up we worked on moving forward with knee strike followed with front snap kick.

Next came front snap kick with front punch but after a few of those, Sensei had us come down into cat stance after the kick and then push our front leg forward and attack with the knee.  This entire drill helps us push from the hips instead of the upper body.  It’s certainly much harder to push from the hips and not do the punch over the top from the chest and shoulders.  This is another key concept that Sensei has told us many times and finally, it is starting to become clear.

Ten-no-kata…

I always like ten-no-kata because it just seems neat to me.  There are many different types of ten-no-kata but the idea is the same, do a group of movements both forward and back, left and right but in succession to work on movements that need extra attention or ones that you want to practice.

We started with our feet about a tile square (one foot) apart, bend at the knees and bring them together, push the foot forward into a front stance and throw a front punch but after the foot is in the correct position then pull back to start position and move forward with the right foot.  draw back again and step back with the right foot.  draw back again and step back with the left leg.  We then continue these movements until we do the required number of repetitions or the concept is understood. The idea behind this drill was for us to get the feel of attacking with the knee and pulling our leg forward when we move into our stance before we throw the punch.

One-step sparring

We did the normal one-step sparring drills.  Our partner does the stand attacks, front punch to the face and stomach, front snap kick, side thrust kick, roundhouse kick and spinning back kick while we block and counter and then we switch places.  After we finished that, Sensei had us stand in front of our partner but about 10 feet away, move forward and punch so that you have a target to focus on.

Kata…

We spent the rest of class working on kata.  We started with Heian Shodan, then Heian Godan,  then Jion and Bassai Dai.

It was an awesome class again but I am sure that there are details that I forgot already.

Sensei DiPasquale was out of town for the upcoming US Open Karate tournament and Sensei Bajic ran the class today.

Warm up those legs…

We started with a horse stance with front punch, then double punch.  Next came horse stance into front stance to the left with reverse punch then  twist to right with reverse punch.   After that, horse stance to front stance with reverse punch and then front snap kick, step back, twist to right and repeat then back to horse stance.   The last warm up was horse stance to left front stance with front snap kick, step back into back stance with knife hand block then back to horse stance with punch.  It was hard to wrap my brain around some of these combination’s but after a couple, it felt fairly fluid.

Breath in when you do your kata…

Sensei had us work on something I don’t recall working on before.  He had us foucs on taking a breath in before doing the moves in the kata.  Breath in to prepare and then breath out when we do the movement.  He had us work on all of the Heian katas along with Jion, Bassai Dai and Kanku Dai with the foucs.  The little extra focus on that part really made the kata feel much more powerful when doing it slowly.  I am not sure how well I do this when doing the kata at normal speed but I am going to try it out.

It was a very hard class but very good too.

Sensei Noia had exam preparation on his mind today.

We spent a good amount of time on our warm up.  We started by jogging back and forth across the dojo.  Next came low walks, sideways shuffle, low walks with a twist and moving forward kick to our hands to stretch out our hips.

Stances, get them right…

• Sensei had us move forward and back with our hips straight ahead like a punch.  Next we turned our hips 45 degrees to the side like when blocking.

• We then did back stances forward and back without using our hands.

• Next came horse stance moving sideways.

• Next was back stance into front stance like in Heian Nidan.

Time for combination’s…

We spent a good amount of time doing rising block, inward block, outward block  and downward block with reverse punch both forward and back.

Next, we moved into a front stance, then from there we squeezed our legs together and then moved into back stance.  For example, we started with left leg forward front stance, we squeezed our legs together and then put our right leg out into a back stance.  The moved formed a square.   We then repeated with the right leg forward first.

We finished up with Heian Shodan but after each movement, we moved from a front stance into back stance between each move.  This added a new dimension to the kata and it really works the legs hard.

It was a great class and I am looking forward to more like it.