Archives for 2011

Sensei Brien told us that he was going to do things in class this session that are unconventional and that we haven’t done before.  Today we did just that by spending the entire class working on something that I do not remember doing in any class before.

Hit anywhere you want….

Sensei had us get a partner and told us that we could hit any part of our partners body.  This included kicks and strikes below the belt to the groin, knees, ankles and feet along with attacks to the neck and throat and some joint locks too.  The idea behind this drill is to prepare us to think about how we would react if someone attacks an area that is normally off limits during regular kumite drills.  This puts things in a different perspective.  Unlike one-step sparring, where we have done similar drills like this, we were moving around like when we do free sparring.  I have always mentioned to others, when talking about self defense theory, that the knees make a good target, especially when the attacker is larger than me.  I also like the throat and eyes as another good target.

I did this drill with six different partners and each one had a different attack that they favored.  One went for my eyes on almost every attack, another aimed for my knees and another tried to get me into joint locks every chance he had.

It was a new and good experience to work on areas that we normally do not work on and I am looking forward to doing it again.

Sensei Brien had us work on something new today.  We did a some sparring work that I don’t remember doing in the past and we spent the entire 90 minutes working on it.

Crazy hands kumite…..

We started out in a fighting stance and with our front hand, we made the shape of a figure 8 on the air.  We did this with both the left and right hands and then both hands at the same time.

The idea behind this concept was to keep your opponents mind busy on your moving hands and to keep them moving at all times.  When doing a block, you blocked and then went back to the figure 8 pattern, when you punched, you punched and went back to it again.  Keeping the constant motion when doing blocks or attacks was hard at times because I wanted to stop after every attack and reset.  Another interesting part of this was it almost totally masks your kicks.  You could also use one moving hand to block and the other to attack at the same time or do many attacks in a row.

When we started working with partners, being the offensive opponent seemed to work better for me than we I was being the defensive opponent.  I am not sure if the others found the same though.   It was some really good stuff but it needs to be practiced with a partner to be able to improve at it.

Sensei Cieplik has been sharing concepts and techniques with us that we have never done before.  Today’s theme was related to sweeping but not the sweeping that we do in sport kumite or with a broom.

Don’t scoop……

I would have thought after seven years of Karate classes that I would have learned how to do a front snap kick correctly.  While doing our kicking warm up, like we do each week, Sensei noticed that I was doing a scooping motion when my foot was leaving floor as I was doing my front snap kicks.  As my knee is coming up, my foot is doing a scooping motion and my toes are pointing down until my knee is up all the way in front.   I understand what he is saying and I did a couple the correct way but now need to figure out how to fix it permanently.   One of the things I enjoy most about Karate is when I just think I finally got it, I don’t got it.

Two steps forward and two steps back and stretch it out….

For our basics today, Sensei had us do each technique with two moves forward and two moves backward.  We did downward block, inward block, rising block, outward block, outward block with jab and reverse punch and lastly, knife hand block.

We spent a good amount of time on the next drill.  We started in a front stance with our front foot on one of the tile lines.  From there, we did a long stretching rear leg roundhouse kick, brought the kicking foot down in front, did a back fist with the front hand and then stepped in and did a front punch.  The idea behind this drill was to really open the hips and to cover a lot of ground.  In order to get the most distance you do not retract or snap back the roundhouse kick leg, instead you leave it extended with the hip open and set it down in front.  Not snapping the kick back adds a good amount of distance.

Partner sweeps….

For the next drill, we did some sweeping movements that were different than I remember ever doing before.  The one that is the easiest for me to explain was the following.  One partner threw a front snap kick and as they went to set the kicking foot down in front, the other partner used their foot to sweep their partners front leg out from under them.  The idea is to move just far enough out of the way to avoid getting kicked and as the attackers foot comes down you sweep it, either to the inside or outside, take them off balance and then give them a good punch, elbow or joint lock.  The key to this is mostly timing and taking their balance away from them to open them up to a bunch of different attacks.

We finished up class with Heian Shodan through Heian Godan.

It was another great class but I am sure my hips and legs will think different tomorrow morning.