Kicks, squats and loose arm power

From a front stance do a front snap kick and hold, then drop the body down on to the stationary leg then put kicking foot down into blocking leg stance and push forward from the hips into a front stance.

Sensei felt that our kicks needed some help so we did some squat kicks.  This drill starts out standing, you squat down, then come back up and kick with one leg, then squat back down again and kick with the other leg until Sensei says stop.  I am not sure how long we did this drill but there were at least 25 kicks with each leg.  The kicking part is easy and the squatting part is not.

We moved on to rising block, inward block, outward block and downward block all with reverse punch.  After that drill, Sensei wanted us to push more from the hips and he had us start in a front stance, turn 180 degrees into a cat stance and then push forward from the hips into a front stance again.  When doing the turn, the idea was to turn using the hips, not the shoulders, and then move into the front stance again, using the hips.

This drill was different, like many of the drills Sensei Cieplik has been sharing with us lately.  We worked on loose arm punches but we let our arm swing all the way behind us and when it was loose, we punched.  The idea was to keep the arm straight when swinging it and then let it fly into our partner and then tighten up at the point of impact.  These loose power moves are more powerful than any tensed moves that I have done in the past.  One important note when doing these loose power movements is, you should hit something otherwise you might hyper-extend your elbows like I do.

We spent the rest of the class working on kata.  We did Heian Shodan using the loose power punch on all punching movements.

We also did Heian 1 three more times, Heian 2, 3, 4, and 5 twice each.  We then finished up class taking a Kyu rank on the side to help them with their kata.  I took my friend Tom through Heian 5 a few times, sharing what Sensei shared with me over the years and class was over.