Squeeze and punch

In this class, Sensei Noia had us work on squeezing the floor in our stances and also squeezing our muscles very hard.  The idea was to feel all the muscles throughout the techniques and do the moves with perfect form to help us realize what the technique should feel like at the end of each movement.

This is something that I know I have not focused on enough and I need to do more of in the future.  I often find myself not tightening my abdominals or other muscles that I should be tightening during many techniques.  This becomes very apparent when Sensei will walk past and push on my shoulder or hip and I fall over.  The connection of the correct muscles should make the body perform as one unit and this is something that I still struggle with after training for almost 10 years.

Squeeze and punch….

Our first drill was squeeze the floor and punch very slowly in a horse stance.  Keeping in tune to what I mentioned above, squeezing the floor and tightening our abdominals, butt muscles and upper back muscles as we executed each punch was a very important part of this drill.

We did the same in front stance which made us tighten other muscles but the concept stayed the same.  Next, we moved forward with a front punch, then front snap kick and front punch making sure to squeeze all the muscles then triple punch.  Make sure to complete all the punches on the triple punch because often, many students skip the second punch or forget all about the draw hand to make the punches faster.

Next, we worked on doing an entire kata, Jion, while squeezing the floor and all of our muscles hard.  Doing Jion was a really tiring but then it was even harder when Sensei said to do Kanku Dai the same way.

After that, we worked on a section of our own kata and then did it once full out to finish up class.