Pad drills even work with kata

This week, the dojo was warmer but Sensei Noia gave us a good warm up anyway. We started jogging back and forth 6 times across the dojo. Next, we did lunges forward to the middle of the dojo and then turned 180 degrees and did the lunges backward to the other end. We did knees up to our hands halfway across the dojo and then inside out leg circles. We finished the warm doing stationary leg raises to the front, side and back 10 times.

Triple kick time

Now that we were warm, we did a front snap kick to front, side thrust to side and back kick to rear then stepped forward, then did the same three kicks with the same leg and then we stepped backward.  Lots of kicks in a small amount space.

Partner drills

For the next drill, we found a partner. One person stepped forward with a Jodan punch and the other partner stepped back and did a rising block with a chudan reverse punch and front punch and then repeat the same with the other partner.

The next drill was similar except the one partner did a chudan punch and the other partner does an outward block with the same reverse punch and front punch.

For the last drill like these, one partner does two chudan punches and the other partner does an outward block and a reverse outward block from the kata Bassai Dai.

Kata pad drills

For the next drills, we stayed with our partner but one of us got a pad. One partner held the pad and the other partner had a choice of moves. The choices were the following:

The first move from Bassai Dai
The cross leg, block strike move from Empi
The second from the last move in Gojushiho Sho with the double edge hand strike

All of these techniques were executed in a cross leg stance which is one stance that we don’t often hit things while doing it.  This was a good test of making sure that the hips and legs were in the correct position otherwise your attack is weak and you end up bouncing back off your partner.

After the pad drills, we finished class with four katas of our choice.