Archives for 2010

Sensei Brien has been upping the intensity to help us prepare for our belt exams and today was another really tough class.

Double moves for each step….

Sensei had us start with basics but with each count he wanted us to increase our intensity.  To make the drill harder, Sensei also had us do double moves with each count.  For example, we took one step, did downward block with reverse punch and downward block with reverse punch again.  We did the same drills, all with double moves with rising block, inward block, outward block, double front snap kick, double roundhouse and knife hand block with front snap kick and nukite.

Partner kicks and fighting one step sparring….

For the next drill, we got a partner and did standing front snap kick and side thrust kicks.  The idea was to stand upright and not lean when doing the side thrust kicks.  We stood right next to our partner with our arm on their shoulder to keep us as upright as possible.

For the nest drill, we did one step sparring but with a twist.  instead of standing in a the normal front stance for attacker and ready stance for defender, we started in a fighting stance.  This makes the drills much more realistic than doing them the other way in my opinion.  We did all six attacks; Front punch to head and stomach, front snap kick, side thrust kick, roundhouse kick and spinning back kick.

Mind before movement….

We finished up class with something really neat.  We did kata but with some different mental focus then usual.  Sensei had us do our first kata with fierce intensity and relaxed form.  The idea was to use knock down all out power.

For the second kata, he had us pay extra attention to our draw hand. Before each move, Sensei wanted us to focus on the draw hand exclusively.

For the next kata, we used loose or relaxed muscles to focus on speed.

The forth kata really made me think.  Before doing each move, we were to say the next stance in our head before we moved.  The idea was to focus totally on the stance and I noticed a huge improvement in my stances just by thinking about them.

For the final kata, Sensei had us focus on all of the above.  This was pretty tough but Sensei said that he saw a huge improvement in everyones kata.

It was a great class but the kata at the end really wiped me out.

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Sensei Cieplik is really working on preparing everyone who is testing for their exam.  He is really helping us focus on the little details that make big differences.

Keep the knee up while kicking….

We started with the normal warm up then we spent some extra time on our front snap kick.  Sensei had us hold our legs behind the knee and extend our lower leg.   the idea was to get the feeling of keeping the knee up while kicking and having our knee act like a hinge.

After that drill, we worked on knee strike with front snap kick but making sure that the knee stays up when kicking.

More kihon….

After a few rising blocks with reverse punch, Sensei had us block a little different.  Instead of having our elbow in front of us, he wants us to put our elbow at angle and a bit more forward.  The idea is to use the lats muscles instead of the shoulder muscles when blocking.  Also, when blocking like this, the back leg is almost straight but not totally straight.   It has to stay bent if you need to reverse punch after the block.

Next came back stance with knife hand block.  After that came the same drill but we added the front snap kick.  One detail that Sensei gave us here was to keep our kick inside our back hand closer to the middle of our body instead of outside our body.

Next, we worked on horse stance with side thrust kick and side snap kick.  Sensei made the point when doing side snap kick, we need to kick from the floor and not chamber first from our knee.

Sensei made some excellent points tonight:

Doing moves forward is learning and doing them backward is for real.

If you focus on the result, the actions with be perfect.

It takes 30 years to learn Karate…

10 years to relax, 10 years to adapt your body to the movements and 10 years to move naturally.

This is one point that I really never though of until today, when switching feet, keep your eyes up.  Looking down means failure.

A mother bear will fight a full gown grizzly bear to protect her cub.

Kata….

We finished up class with all the Heian Katas, Tekki Shodan, Bassai Dai and some black belt katas for the Shodan’s and above.

A point that Sensei made when doing kata is:  Do kata with the intention of hitting someone, if you cannot commit to hitting someone, your kata will always be lacking.

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Another tough class from Sensei Noia.

We started in a horse stance, then we pivoted to the left with with a right hand reverse punch, then we pivoted to the right with a left reverse punch, then back to a horse stance with double punch and then shuffle to the left and punch, then repeat.

Step forward with block and reverse punch, step again with another block and reverse punch, then turn, move back with a block and reverse punch, then back again with reverse punch.

We spent most of the class working on basics like those above but Sensei did manage to have us get in a few katas just before class ended.

This article was originally posted on www.shotokanplanet.org. Any reproduction on any other site is prohibited and a violation of copyright laws.