Sensei Noia has been taking a different approach with the advanced class for that last few months and tonight was another good example. He had mentioned to me about a month ago that he wanted us to start training again like we used to in the past and like he trained. I am not sure about my other classmates but I have seen a huge improvement in my endurance, even though the classes have been very hard.
Kata, one-step at a time….
Sensei had us warm up with some kata and one-step sparring. We got a partner and each of us did Heian Shodan and as soon as we finished that kata, we did one-step sparring. We then did each of the other four Heian kata’s and Tekki Shodan with the one-step drill in between them each time. This was a terrific warm up.
Kihon….
We started across from our partner in a horse stance. From there we did front punches, double punches, triple punches along with rising block, inward block, outward block and downward block while holding our stance. After that, Sensei had us get into shiko dachi (like a sumo stance) and had us do the same movements as above. We ended up doing over 100 movements in each stance.
Next, we worked on back stance. We started with stationary knife hand block. For our next drill, we worked from a cat stance. Each time Sensei counted we moved from a cat stance into a back stance making sure that we turned on our heels when moving from one move to the other. We also did another drill where we started in a cat stance and did a stationary front leg front snap kick while keeping all our weight over the back leg.
Moving on….
For our next group of drills, Sensei had us work on blocks with reverse punch. We started moving forward with a group of movements. We did rising block, inward block, outward block and downward block all with reverse punch after each block. Sensei had us focus on the finishing each move and also stepping forward as fast as possible. I lost count of how many times we did this drill but it had to be at least 30 times or move.
Finish up with one kata…
We finished up class doing one kata, our belt kata.
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