Switch feet and repeat

We have been working on a lot of foot switching in class with Sensei Noia lately.  These are a bunch of great Karate drills that allow you to do some solid kihon in small spaces.  I don’t know how many times I have heard someone say, “I don’t have space to do Karate at home” but because of drills like these there are no excuses.

We started out with a warm up doing all five Heian katas with 5 burpees in between kata.  I don’t mind doing the burpees but I cannot do them until I am really warmed up, otherwise I will either limp home or worse, so I did nice and easy slow squats instead.

After the warm up, we started in a horse stance doing single front punches and double punches.  Next, while still in a horse stance, we did a punch to the front, pivoted to left and punched, pivoted back to horse stance with double punch, then pivoted to right with a punch.  As I mentioned above, this is a great drill

Technique, switch feet, technique,repeat……

These drills started out with our left foot forward in a front stance, from there, bring the back leg (foot) to front (knees together), then step back with left foot and front punch.

For the next drill, we started in a left foot forward back stance with knife hand block, we then bring the right foot up to the left foot, step back with the left foot into a back with knife hand block.

The next drill was in a left foot forward front stance with a reverse outward block, bring the right leg to the front, step back with the left leg with and outward block and a reverse outward block combination.

Another similar drill started in a left foot forward front stance, bring the right leg to front, step back with a downward block and reverse punch.

The last drill was in a horse stance to the front, switch feet and then palm heel strike to the front.

Finish up with some kata….

We started Heian Sandan, then Jion,  then Bassai Dai and Empi three times.