Another excellent class with Sensei Cieplik. Sensei also shared an interesting tip: In order to keep from putting too much stress on the body with acrobatic type movements, “Visualize the movement three times and do it once.”
Some different kihon drills…
After the warm up, we did knee strike with front snap kick. Then, front snap kick with front punch. Next came front leg front snap kick, rear leg front snap kick followed up with sanbon zuki (triple punch).
Get a partner…
We spent a lot of time working on some partner drills. We start with a drills where one partner would jab and reverse punch and the other would block both attacks and counter with a jab. For example, from kamae, with both partners in a a fighting stance, with left hand and leg forward, you jab with the left hand, reverse punch with the right. The person on defense, blocks the jab with the left hand, blocks the reverse punch with the right hand and counter with a left hand jab.
The next drill is similar but instead of a using a jab to counter, you use a backfist instead.
The next drill is a little harder to put into written text and hard to remember too but I will try. One partner stands in ready stance and the other parter is in a fighting stance. From their the partner in the fighting stance is attacking with a front snap kick and the partner on defense is doing a low scooping block under the attackers leg, driving them back off balance and attacking their face with a jab or backfist. It was a pretty dangerous movement and we had to do it very slowly in order not to take our partner down.
A kata called Rohai…
This was fun. Sensei called all of the Shodan’s to the front and did a kata with us. This kata is not from Shotokan but instead, it is from Yamazaki Sensei’s (Sensei Cieplik’s Sensei) style called Ryobu-kai. The kata is called Rohai and is equivalent to middle belt, maybe green belt level. I wish I could describe this kata but even after doing it three times with Sensei, I cannot remember much more than the first few moves.
It was an awesome class!
This article was originally posted on www.shotokanplanet.org. Any reproduction on any other site is prohibited and a violation of copyright laws.