Hate the stopwatch, not the Sensei – 6/17/11 – Friday Karate class

Now that exams are over, Sensei Brien has been giving us some specialized training classes.  He has been sharing specific techniques help make us better fighters and improve our Karate overall.

Attack, block the kick and counter attack…..

For our first drill, we started out in front of our partner, both in a fighting stance.  From there, one partner shuffled in and reverse punched and as they moved out, the other partner threw a front snap kick at them, on their way out.  From there, the partner moving out needs to block the front kick and counter attack.  We spent a good amount of the class working on this one drill.

One of the most important parts of this drill was to turn the kicking partner off center after blocking their kick.  If you did a normal downward block, using the outside of their your forearm, chances are it would take them slightly off center and allow you to counter to the front of their head or body.  This would also give them a chance to block and or counter back if they could move fast enough.

Another way to do it was to use the inside part of the forearm to block the kicking partners body and turn them by 90 degrees or move.  This allows for a counter attack to the side or back of the head or body with no chance of them counter attacking again.

We also did this drill in an anchor man fashion where have the class stood on on side doing the kick as the other group when down the line doing their attack, block and counter attack.  This gives everyone a chance to work with different size and skill levels.

Hate the stopwatch, not the Sensei….

Sensei brought his stopwatch to class today.  When he has the stop watch with him, that usually guarantees that we are going to do some type of endurance training.  Sensei had us move into a lunge stance and put a pad on the floor under the back leg knee.  From there, our partner stood in front of us and we stretched into a longer lunge stance and reverse punched.  After the punch, that partner would lunge back an touch their knee to the pad again for 30 seconds.

I want to say there was another timed drill, that might have involved kicking but for some reason, my mind must be blocking it out.  It must have been a tough one.