Outside of our comfort zone.

Today was one of those Karate classes that took us outside of our comfort zone.  It wasn’t physically hard but it was mentally hard.  We spent the first half of class working on a simple kata like Taikyoku Shodan but with a twist.

Modified kata…

We started working on Taikyoku Shodan, moving slowly but paying extra attention to not move up and down between each move.  After that, we did it again but this time moving very fast from one move to the next.

Now came the part that made it interesting, we did the kata again but this time, we did a double punch after every downward block and a triple punch for every single punch.  For the next kata, we did an inward block and outward block for each blocking movement.  We did these katas both with Sensei Noia counting and then on our own.

Regular kata…

We spent the rest of class working on Bassai Dai and Empi.  We spent a lot of time working on the moves up to the first kiai and then we did the full kata.  Sensei gave an a good tip on doing the outward blocks in the kata.  He said that we can start the outward blocks with the blocking hand lower on our body instead of under our arm.  This little tip changed the entire kata for me and helped me get more hip motion on the blocks.

For Empi, we spent a lot of time working from the first move to the in the horse stance with hook punch, then to the move before the first kiai and finally the entire kata.