Those combinations add up to a lot of work

It doesn’t look like a lot of work but looks can be deceiving.  These classes are tough.  Sensei Noia hasn’t been giving us do a lot of different drills but we spend a lot of time on the combination drills that we are doing.  For example, the first drill below has three different stances and techniques that we are doing at least 10 times on each side of the body.

There were three parts to the first kihon drill.  (1) Start in a horse stance with downward block.  From that position, (2) pull the left leg back into back stance with a left arm, high outward block and a right are downward block.  From that position, (3) step into front stance with a front punch.

For the next drill, we were moving forward and back doing downward block with reverse punch.  We did the same movement as above but two times for one count.  Next, we did reverse inward block with inward block.  Then came, reverse outward block, outward block and reverse outward block on one count.

The last combination drill was moving forward and backward, starting in a horse stance with a downward block, move into a back stance with knife hand block and then move into a front stance with a triple punch.

We spent the rest of the class working on kata.  We started with Heian Shodan, then we could pick any Heian kata.  After that we could pick, Jion, Bassai Dai or Kanku Dai, Kanku Dai for me.  We ended class with four more katas of our choice and it was Hangetsu three times and Gojushiho Sho once for me.