Kata like a black belt – 9/10/10 – Friday Karate class

First day of the new session and Sensei Brien gave us a really good class. Some good sparring drills and excellent kata advice.

Three step and five step….

Sensei had us spend most the class working on three and five step sparring type drills.

One partner would attack with three jodan front punches, the other partner would do three rising blocks and counter with a reverse punch after the last block. We then did the same drill but after the last block, the partner would step forward and counter attack.

We did the same drill blocking a chudan punch with an inward block and also did downward block to block our partners kick with and block and counter as above. We also did these drills but with five steps instead of only three.

Kata like a black belt…

We finished up working on kata. Sensei had do Heian Shodan first. A key point that he made was for the higher belts to do lower belt kata like a higher belt. He said that a black belt should do lower belt kata like a black belt instead of doing it the way they did when they learned it. Sensei said that the tempo needs to be changed not the speed of the kata.

Sensei Brien and Sensei Cieplik have mentioned this in the past, do lower belt with high belt knowledge. Oddly enough, it didn’t really sink into my brain until today. Now that I understand what they are asking for, I need to do it.

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