A block that failed

Today Sensei Cieplik had us work on some hip opening drills, moving away by dropping instead of stepping back and a block that fails and turns into a strike.

After our normal kicking warm ups Sensei  had us do a drill where we learn forward and put all of our weight on our front leg and then lift the back leg up off the floor at a 45 degree angle to the side.  The idea is to keep the weight on the front leg and pick the back foot off the floor directly.  This drill is warm and open up the hips.

We then did a similar drill but but we slid back, like shifting,without moving our body up.  The idea was to move backward without allowing the body to rise up and to use the entire body to throw the kick.

Next, we stood in a comfortable ready stance, with both and loose and then threw a double hand punch to the front. The knees need to be loose and then when doing he double punch, the butt muscles need to tighten as the punch finishes.

We did the same drill with the hands but this time we stepped back into a front stance with the two handed double punch. The idea here was to settle into the stance before punching instead of punching as we moved into the stance.  We then did the same move again but this time with our fists vertical and in a rising motion much like at the start of Gojushiho Dai.

Time to hit our partner….

For the first partner drill, our partner would kick or punch and we would drop back and shift out of the way.  The key to this drill was drop first and then shift which ensured that we moved from our hips and legs instead of our upper body. If we move back without dropping, it would almost ensure that we would get hit but dropping allowed us to get out of the way.

The next drill was about a block that fails.  Our partner would step in and punch and we would drop and do a rising block but let the block fail turning the movement into an elbow strike.  Letting the arm drop and the elbow moving to the side makes the punch slide past you, to the outside allowing for the elbow strike and an additional counter attack with a knife hand strike.

For the last partner drill, we did a knife hand block then countered with a palm strike.

We finished up class doing Heian Shodan three times but trying to incorporate the techniques from the partner drills above.