Let the stances begin

I really enjoy exam time,  Not because I am testing but because Sensei Noia has us work on stances and kata for almost three solid months.  This is the time that my Karate improves a great deal and if I could have classes like these all year around, I would not complain.

We started out with the tough warm up again by, jogging twice across the dojo, low walks across and back, butt kickers where we put our hands behind us and try to hit them with out heels, shuffle sideways across and back and dynamic leg raises to the front and side.

Sensei followed that up with a really good stretch, which really helps me loosen up and then we got down to business.

Let the stances begin…

We started facing the side with our feet together and moving into a front stance with reverse punch.  The idea was to move from the hips and push from the back heel.  We did the same with different blocks and punches and then moved forward doing the same.

Next, we did back stance with knife hand block move into front stance with knife hand strike to the front.  We followed that with rising open hand block and the same knife hand strike (from Kanku Dai).  Still in a back stance, we did the downward and high outward block and then moved into front stance with spear hand strike to solar plexus level.

For the next drill, we moved from stance to stance as follows.  We started doing downward block and reverse punch in a horse stance, then moving into back stance  and then into front stance.  We changed stances after each count and then we did all three stance with one count.

Kata parts and all…

We picked a kata (Gojushiho Sho for me) doing only stances.  Then we did it to the first kiai twice and we finished up from the kiai to the end of the kata.