I have sparred and have gotten hit a lot in the past but today was full of kicks, punches and the just about everything including the kitchen sink. Sensei Noia worked us to the point of mental fatigue that I don’t remember being in, in the past.
Get your kata over with….
We started the class with some kata. We did Taikyoku Shodan first, then all of the Heian katas, then Tekki Shodan, Jion, Bassai Dai and Kanku Dai. We did all 10 of these katas in 12 to 15 minutes.
Get your pads on and get a partner….
We started with some free sparring drills but we could only use kicks to score with our partner. We switched partners about five times. The next sparring drill had us using only our hands to score. This time, we switched partners four times.
Next, we made one long line across the dojo with our partner in front of us. From there, we free sparred with a different partner until we sparring with everyone in the line across from us. There were about 40 of us in the class so everyone sparred 20 different people. It was non stop, constant sparring and I would say that is was much harder than the anchorman sparring that I did at my test for Shodan.
I was holding my own pretty well, at least in my own mind, until I paired up with Sensei Plocharczyk. He hit me more times than all of the other 19 people combined. I lost count of how many times he hit me after the first 10 or so. It was a good learning experience though.
We finished up with some push ups and class was over.
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