Get your balance before you kick

Today’s class started out with some free sparring for a warm up and then we did kihon and lots of kata.

Get your balance before you kick…

We started our kihon drills doing some kicks.  Front kick to the front, side thrust kick to the side, back kick to the rear and roundhouse kick to the front.  One thing that I often do, when doing groups of kicks like these, is to try my best to hurry through them.  I am sure that this is certainly an ugly sight to behold but I know that my power and accuracy is way down when I hurry.  Sensei Noia told everyone, get your balance before you do the next kick.  This simple sentence made so much sense but for some reason it never really sunk into my thick skull until tonight.  Slowing down and gathering my balance before each kick made a huge mental difference to me.  I am not sure if my kicks looked better but they certainly felt better.  You would think this would be common sense by now but sometimes the nail has to be hammered into the wood more than once.

We did the same kicking drill, as above, but we added reverse punch to the end of the group of kicks.

For our next kihon drills we moved forward and back doing the following:

• Rising block with reverse punch
• Outward block, jab with reverse punch
• Inward block with reverse punch
• Downward block with reverse punch
• Inward block, elbow strike and backfist
• Back stance with knife hand block, front leg front snap kick, step down into a front stance with spear hand strike.

Best and worst kata…

We spent the rest of the class working on kata.  We started out with Bassai Dai and then Kanku Dai.  After that, Sensei told us to pick a kata of our choice.  Myself and a few others did Gojushiho Sho twice.  After that Sensei had us do Heian Yondan, then back to the kata of our choice again.  He then had us pick our least favorite kata, which is Tekki Shodan for me and do it once.  It’s not that I don’t like Tekki Shodan, I just don’t feel that it is my best kata.  We finished up doing the kata of our choice twice and class ended.