Time for a new kata – Nijushiho

I have had to miss a couple of classes because I was sick one week and my wife was sick another but luckily, I didn’t miss the class we did today.  Sensei Noia shared a new kata with us today and it is called Nijushiho.  This is a kata that I have wanted to learn for some time but I was having a tough time trying to learn it from a book or videos on the internet.  This kata translates to 24 moves but even though it is a short kata, it has some moves that require good coordination and varied timing.

Nijushiho kihon and kata…

For the first 15 minutes of class, after our warm up, we worked on some of the kihon (basics) of Nijushiho.  The first group of moves was from a horse stance, we reached with our right hand, threw a side thrust kick while pulling the our right hand (fist) to our right hip then stepped back down and into the horse stance and threw a left handed reverse punch.  We did the same movement but to the left side.  We did the next drill from a horse stance again but this time we did a rising elbow strike to the side, then shifted in, staying in a horse stance and did a cross body type punch with both hands, one hand high and one low, then shifted back and did a downward block.

After the kihon, we moved into the kata itself.  I really like the way that Sensei Noia teaches kata, he had us work on the first few moves and then after, we do them five times, he has us move on to the next few moves.  After we get through about a dozen moves, he has us start at the first move and go all the way to the last move that he showed us.  When doing this type of training, we end up doing many moves but I really do not notice it because the pace is slow enough to learn but fast enough to get a great workout.

I like this kata a lot and I hope that we spend a lot more time working on it in the future.