Sensei Brien had us start out in a horse stance with many punches and blocks to get warmed up.
Functional kata basics….
I cannot really describe this any better way than I did above. Sensei had us do various moves from various kata’s. For example, we worked on:
- Back stance with front snap kick and spear hand.
- Front stance with side snap kick and come down into back stance with knife hand block.
- Standing with side snap kick, then come down with elbow strike.
- Horse stance with crescent kick and elbow strike.
- Same move as above but stop a inch short of the elbow strike to engage our core better.
Some kicking and more kata parts….
After a short water break, we got a partner and worked on a really cool kicking drill. We stood next to our partner and gabbed hands. From there, one partner did a side snap kick under our partners arm, then a side thrust kick and then a hook kick. This really worked the hips.
For our next drills, we did parts of our kata. We stayed with our partner and did yama zuki (u-punch) across the floor. We also worked on the low sweeping block after the third yama zuki. Another drill was from the double inward scissor strike and shift with front punch.  We finished up with an entire kata.
I really enjoy these functional classes and hope that we continue to do them even after examinations are over.
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