Archives for June 2012

There seems to be a trend related to kicks.  If I had to guess, Sensei Cieplik is seeing something in our front snap kicks that we really need to improve upon.  If I was a good guesser, I would guess that many of us (me being more guilty at this than most) are letting our kicking knee drop after we extend our lower leg instead of raising the knee higher.  Doing so causes the leg to straighten much like a front thrust kick instead of a front snap kick.  This also places a great deal of stress on the knee and the hamstring muscle of the kicking leg.

Fix those kicks by doing kicks….

We did many front snap kicks but the corrective movements were knee up to the shoulder and hug your knee.

For the knee up to the shoulder, we started in left foot forward front stance, put our left hand across our body, at our right shoulder level and then raised the right knee and touched it to our left hand.  The key is to bring the knee to the hand and not to lean over and break the upright posture.

I always felt that the knee up hug was harder than the drill above.  For this drill, we started in a left foot forward front stance and then pulled the left leg to our chest and hugged it.  Again, the main key is keeping the upper body upright throughout the drill.  Bringing the chest to the knee causes a lot of stress on the lower back (lumbar spine) and cancels out what the drill is supposed to be doing.

Make each move a separate kata…

Heian shodan  42 seconds. Finish each move, stop, go again.  I have done this one my own before and it really make the kata feel different.  Sensei mentioned, make each move a separate kata.  In my opinion, for sport, we move as fast as we can from move to move but when training for ourselves, we can make each move count and know that all attackers that we defeat in our kata are just that, defeated.

Drop into a back stance or get hit….

We spent the rest of class working with our partner.  The first drill started with one partner punching at our face and we stepped into a back stance keeping our face just out of the range of punch.  The idea behind this drill was to drop down into a back stance instead of moving forward.  A punch coming at the face makes the drill work just the way it should unlike doing the drill without it.

The next drill was to have our partner do a knife hand block ensuring that their hand was turned, showing the forearm to engage the lat (upper back) muscles.  This also keeps the arm inside the body.

We finished up with a shin clash and twist to our partners leg.  As they step into punch, we step into to their leg, hit their shin bringing our knee to the inside of their leg and then push and twist our leg to the outside.  This pushes our partners shin and takes them down to the floor.  Even if the attackers leg is extremely strong even, the smallest of people can take them down because of the position it puts the attackers knee in.  It’s moves like these that allow smaller and weaker people to survive attacks from larger more powerful attackers.

Today, Sensei Noia had us work on our sparring skills using only kicks.

Kicks only sparring….

We warmed up doing alternating kicks with our partner.  We did front snap kicks, roundhouse kicks, hook kicks and side thrust kicks.  We did a lot of kicks and I am guessing it was near 20 minutes worth.

We followed that up with one partner doing five kicking attacks and the other partner trying to block and counter but the counter attacks could only be a kicking technique.

We started free sparring but again, we could only use kicking attacks and counter attacks.

Attack the pad, with your hands…

We ended class with some pad drills.  For this drill, we could only use hand attacks.  For example, punches, ridge hand, knife hand, palm, back fist and back hand attacks.

Sensei Cieplik had us work on the famous power goes in drill today.

After our warm up we worked on our kihon.  We moved forward and backward in a front stance doing rising block with reverse punch, downward block with reverse punch, inward block with reverse punch and outward block with reverse punch.

Next, from a back stance we did moving forward and back with knife hand block, then knife hand block with front stance kick, then knife hand block with front snap kick moving into front stance with spear hand strike.  Sensei put emphasis on keeping the front foot quiet when moving forward in a back stance.  The idea is to move the front foot very lightly with the toes not the heels which requires most of your weight to be on the back leg.

Power goes in…

We partnered up and spent a lot of time working on hitting a pad. The movement is much like a vertical punch but it needs to have a distinct flick of the fist at the end of the movement.  Think of it as if your first s hitting the same area twice with one movement.

Loose arms are needed to execute this correctly.  Keeping the hand loose just until impact is key.  One movement that Sensei shared with us to loosen our arms is to lean forward so that the arm hangs down in front and move arm in a circular motion from the shoulder.  The best way to describe this movement is a rock (your fist) on a rope (your arm) attached at the shoulder.  The movement of the body makes the arm move not the arm itself.

We finished our class doing kata.  We started with Heain Yondan, then Heian Godan, Tekki Shodan, Jion and Bassai Dai each a couple or few times.