This was one of the largest classes that I have ever seen in the Glenview dojo. There were many of Sensei Cieplik’s students, both past and current, who came to have one last class with Sensei before he retires.  The nice part for me was many of my first Sensei’s that I started training with were in the is class training with us. The spirit in the dojo was at its peak today.
After our warm up, we did a drill where we started in a front stance, brought the front leg knee up, drove forward off the back leg from the hips and not the chest. The idea was to move forward while bringing the front leg off the floor. We did the same drill but this time we did a front snap kick with the front leg and then followed that with a rear leg front snap kick.
Next came the basics. We did downward block, inward block, rising block and outward block all with reverse punch. After that we did outward block, jab and reverse punch making sure to use no hip turn on the outward block. The reason for no hip on the outward block is because, when we stop forward the hip is already in the perfect 45 degree angle.
We then partnered up with a pad and did loose hook punch many times. The idea was to drop in a horse stance to make the power for the punch and also angle the punch in and down.
We then did Heian Shodan three times, Jion three times and Heian Sandan three times. One very important part of Jion was the first move. Think of dropping down and moving the left leg back as holding ground and not retreating. Your upper body stays in the same place because you drop down on the front leg and then stabilize your stance with the back leg.
This class went by very quickly because I, along with everyone else knew that this is one of our last classes with Sensei.
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