Sensei Noia gave us a hard class today. I don’t remember sparring this much in a long time.
Anchorman….
We started class with a few minutes of free sparring to get warmed up. Next, we lined up for Anchorman. Oddly enough, I was more at ease this time than in the past. I just went up there and sparred. I got hit a few times and end up hitting a few but this just felt much easier than before. The group of students in my line was all experienced black belts and even though they are all really good, I didn’t feel out of place for a welcome change. Maybe they were all being nice to me for some reason.
Sparring drills…
For our next drill, we worked on specific techniques. We started with a drill where we could do any attacks but we could only score with a head high kick. Needless to say, unless my partner or I was going to lay down on the floor, neither of us were going to score. Since we tied, we each had to do 15 pushups. For our next drill, we needed a chudan high kick to score. Oddly enough, neither my partner or I scored so we ended up doing 15 more pushups.
Out of the ordinary sparring drills….
We spent some time on three really interesting drills, one was a close distance drill, another drill with our arms tied up and the last drill holding on to our partners front hand.
For the first drill, we stood within arms reach of each other and had to spar from the distance for the entire time of the drill. Being that close didn’t me too many kicking options but the front hand jab was really flying both to my partners body and head. We also took advantage of the short distance and returned the favor.
For the first drill, one of us had our arms tied with our belt at the elbows. We could block with either hand but we had to stay in place. Both my partner and I hit each other but some of the blocks were effective.
The last drill was where we grabbed our partners hand, left to left and had to spar from that distance. We could use our left hand for blocking but we could not attack with it. Fighting in the close range was not easy by any means but pretty cool. There was not much that could be done without getting hit back since creating an opening on your partner created an opening for him.
Kata….
After close to 50 minutes of constant sparring, we did kata. Sensei sent us out for three kata’s. The 1st kyu’s did a Heian kata, Sensei told me to do Heian Godan, then we did Bassai Dai and we finished up with Jion. I felt like my kata was not my best because my legs were shaking and I had almost no breath left but I was able to finish all of them without falling down.
It was a great class but there seems to be a trend where the classes are getting hard and harder, which is good.
Way to stay in there especially towards the end. I feel like I’m still just learning Jion, and I’m nearly gasping by the end of it. Practice, practice, practice I guess.
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