Archives for 2010

We only did a few drills but they took up a lot of time!

Slow motion…

We started out doing slow motion kumite. The idea was to go slow enough to think about and not have to worry about getting your head knocked off your shoulders. We each sparred everyone in the class for a minute or so, including Sensei Noia. The thing to understand about this drill is that you are going to get hit but you won’t get hurt. Even though we were moving slow, there was no rest between partners so we kept moving constantly for at least 30 minutes.

Block on one knee…

For the next drill, one partner knelt on one knee and blocked while the other partner slowly kicked at them. Again, this was a thinking drill. After this, we did the same drill but standing up.

We finished up with a little arm wrestling match. Needless to say, that was the easiest part of the class for me.

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Lots of good stuff today!

Kicks….

After the warm up, we did moving forward forward knee strike and front snap kick. Then front leg toe tag and rear leg front snap kick.

We then moved into roundhouse kicks. After watching a few of our kicks Sensei Cieplik showed us a drill to help improve our roundhouse kicks.

From a front stance, put most of your weight on your front leg and lean forward. From there, pick the back leg, straight up off the floor. This helps mobilize and strengthen the hips. From the same leaning position, we did did a roundhouse kick again straight up from the floor.

Don’t turn the hips too far…

Sensei had us do moving forward with with outward block, jab and reverse punch. When doing the outward block, Sensei told us not to open our hips too far or we will not have any hips action when doing the jab. The point is, to power in the jab will only be from the arm since the hips won’t be involved if they are already fully opened.

Partner up and move to the side…

For this drill, we stood toe to toe with our partner. From there, our partner throws a reverse punch, we shuffle up, just out of the way of the punch and throw a cutting roundhouse kick. The defending partner only needs to shuffle a short distance in order to get out of the way of the reverse punch. There was no large blocking action or jumping out of the way, just a simple shuffle just outside of the punch.

Lots of kata….

We spent the rest of the class working on kata. We did Heian 1 through Heian 5, Jion, Bassai Dai, Empi and one my favorites, Rohai.

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This was the last class of this session and Sensei Noia had us work on hitting stuff, both pads and our partners.

Partner kicks….

We started out facing our partner. From a front stance, we did three low, medium and high slow motion kicks at our partner. The first kick was to the knee, next kick to the stomach and last to the head. Sensei wanted us to use our hips to extend our kick out.

For the next drill, Sensei called a number and we did that many kicks at our partner at different heights. This was tough when the numbers got higher.

Next, one partner got a pad and the other kicked. First, a light front snap, then medium speed and medium power and after that, full speed and power. I partnered up with my son and he certainly wasn’t holding those kicks back kicking his old man today. It’s all good though, I was able to send some pretty strong kicks his way too.

Have an elbow…

We finished up working on some partner elbow strikes, We started with elbow behind, like a draw hand. Then we did front elbow strike and finished up with a twisting elbow strike. Doing this move behind feels the most powerful and natural to me.

Great way to end the session, hitting stuff is always good!

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