Shotokanplanet.org

This is a log of my journey to Shotokan Karate Shodan and beyond.

Archives for 2010

Lots of stances – 2/16/10 – Tuesday Karate class

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Sensei Noia had us work on our stances tonight.  Not just some stances, all stances.

Do those stances the correct way or not at all….

After a really hard warm we got right into the stance training.  We started with a hips forward stance and moved forward and backward across the dojo.  Next, we open the hips, blocking stance, and moved forward and back across the dojo.

After that, we added blocks and punches to the stances.  We did a lot of movements, first very slow, then a little faster and finally full speed.

For the next drill, we picked any stance and did blocks and attacks of our choice.  For example, I did a cat stance with double downward block, then a front stance with double outward block, then a front stance with ridge hand and whatever others I could think of that we don’t do too often.

End with some kata…

For our first kata, Sensei had us a kata in mirror image.  I did Heian Yondan.  then we did head kata, where we do the entire kata in our head breathing for each movement but not moving our body.  We ended with an all out 100% kata of our choice and then most of us limped to line up.

I am just joking about the limping part, we crawled.

Keep your movements to the inside – 2/11/10 – Thursday Karate class

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Sensei Cieplik had us work on some very specific drills today.  It’s all in the details.

Slide the front foot into a back stance, not stomp….

After our warm up, Sensei had us spend a lot of time working on our back stances.  When moving forward in a back stance, Sensei had us turn our front foot out first and then slide the back foot forward.  If, what is going to be come the back foot is already turned, the weight is already on that leg and the other leg can smoothly slide forward.

Keep your attacks inside the body….

Sensei has said this before but I guess I didn’t really understand what it meant until today.  When doing an attack such as knife hand strike you should keep your hand movements inside the width of your body.  If I understood this correctly, keeping these movements inside of center will take your opponent off center and force their attack to the outside of your body.

Scare them with your foot work….

This is another thing that Sensei has said many time but it doesn’t stick for some reason.  If your foot work is strong and correct, your punches and strikes will flow.  If you legs and your hips move correctly, the hands will go automatically.

Lots of details to practice.

Two partners are better than one – 2/9/10 – Tuesday Karate class

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This was a fun class.  Sensei Noia has been working on improving our sparring skills and today was a test to see if we learned anything.

Get a partner and another partner….

We started out with a hard warm up.  Jogging back and forth across the djo, butt kicks, low walks and dynamic stretches to the front and side.

Sensei told us to get into groups of three.  One person stood in the middle and the other two were at left and right angles to the person in the middle.  For this drill, the person on the left attacked and the person in the middle blocked and counter attacked, the the person on the right attacked and the person in the middle blocked and countered again.  We spent a good amount of time working on this drill and it was a blast.  There was no chance of avoiding every attack.  They came too fast and sometimes from both partners at once even though they were only supposed to be one attack at a time.

We took a little break and did some pushups but a little different.  We did a pushup and as we went down, we put our legs out to the side and when we went up, we brought our legs back in like normal.

Spread out and get up against the wall…..

The next drill was even more challenging.  The partner in the middle stood with their back against the wall and the other two attacked, most of the time both at once.  There was no hiding from getting hit and it was extremely tiring.  I cannot even remember how many times I was hit but it was one of the most fun sparring classes that I have ever had.

We finished up with some conditioning for our abs.  We did crunches, leg lifts and v-sits.

Great class!