Archives for 2011

Today, Sensei Noia worked our minds more than our bodies.

Leave your ego at the door…..

After our warm up, we partnered up and did slow motion kumite.  The idea of this drill is to move slow enough to give each person time to think before blocking or attacking and also keep moving continuously.  This gives each of us time to see which attacks and blocks are effective or not without having to react in a split second like when doing normal sparring drills.  The only problem with this drill is that you have a tendency to move faster and faster as you go along.  We switched partners every minute or two and ended up working with 25 different people during that class.

Wrist to wrist….

For the last few minutes of class, we picked a partner, stood in front of them and put our wrist lightly against theirs.  The idea of the drill is to read your partners attack before they actually attack.  Once they move to attack, you feel them pull away from your wrist and block.  The idea is to hit your partner and never get hit.

We did the same drill with both wrists touching.  It is harder with both wrists touching, at least for me, because I had a tendency to focus on the first move that partner made and ended up getting hit with the other hand.  These type of drills really help improve reaction time.

 

Sensei Cieplik has been sharing many new techniques with us lately.   The side snap kick with reverse punch and the standing upright punch near the end of the this post are both good examples.

Kicks and basics…

After our warm up, from a front stance, we did front leg shuffle up roundhouse kick then shuffle back in to a front stance.  Next we did shuffle up roundhouse kick with front leg, shuffle back, rear leg roundhouse kick, shuffle back so the rear kicking leg become the front leg, then repeat.

Sensei had us slow things down because at least half of the class was doing cutting kicks instead of roundhouse kicks.  We did some slow roundhouse kicks starting with the knee of the kicking leg pointing to the side, then pivot to the front and point the knee forward, kick, pivot back so our knee is facing the side again and set the kicking leg back down behind.

For our final kicking drill, we did side snap kick to the front, then step down and reverse punch.  This was a different drill that I don’t recall doing in the past.

Next, we did moving forward and back with downward block, inward block, outward block, then rising block and reverse punch.

Hold your energy back….

For the next drill we did moving forward and backward in a back stance.   Sensei uses and example where a student is standing in a back stance and he is behind them, trying to get around them.  The back stance is holding the energy back and then when the time is right, it goes forward and POW.  For example, someone throws a punch at you, you move into a back stance with a knife hand block with you weight on your back leg.  From there, you spring forward in to a front stance and throw a front punch.

For the next drill we stood upright and punched.  With our knees a little soggy, we tightened our butts and abdominal muscles and punched.  The idea is to create punching power by having connection between the upper and lower body though the core muscles.

We finished up class doing Heain 1 through 4 and some bunaki for each kata.

Since I enjoy kata so much, today was a really enjoyable class for me.  Sensei Noia had us work on kata for almost the entire class and added a couple of twists to our training.

First half of one kata, then second half of four more…

We started doing Heian Shodan once.  After that, we did Heian Shodan again up to the first kiai.  From there we started from the first kiai in Heian Nidan, then from the first kiai in Hiean Sandan, then Heian Yondan and Heian Godan.

After our kata warm up, we worked on some kihon.  I like to think of these types of basic combination’s as ten-no-kata.

We started moving forward in a left leg forward front stance with a front punch, then stand up with a straight punch and then step back in to a right leg forward front stance and front punch again.  We did the same drill as above but this time, when we stood up between front stances, we did a double punch.

Assisted kihon and kata….

We partnered up and did moving forward with various block and strikes but after each move our partner would check to see if we were doing them correctly.  Our partner checked if our draw hand was tight against our side, if our back leg was straight or bent depending if we were punching or blocking.  They would push on our shoulders to see if we had connection between our upper and lower body or push on our arm to see if we were using our upper back (latissimus) muscles when doing a rising block.  The best part about this type of drill is you can feel if your body is using the correct muscles or not.

For the next drill, we did our belt rank kata (Kanku Dai for my partner and me).  Kanku Dai is a very long kata to have each move checked and holding and squeezing all those muscles is a workout in itself.

We finished up class with two kata’s on our own trying to do them using the corrections and get the feeling that we had when our partner was correcting us.

This is one of my favorite type of class since we get immediate feedback on whether or not we are doing our moves correctly.