Awesome stance drills

Today, Sensei Noia had us work on some awesome stance training drills. We started with a partner with the outside of our foot touching the outside of our partners foot. We alternated moving into front stance and then backward into front stance keeping contact with our partner’s foot. We did the same but after moving forward in the front stance we moved back into back stance. Next we added an attack to front stance and a knife hand block in back stance.

Sensei counted out Heian Shodan twice and then we did it on our own. The same with Heian Nidan. The idea behind this was to try to keep our body from going up and down between stances.

Next we did moving forward with front punch but focusing on moving from the hips and not from shoulders. I have found that you almost have to throw your leg forward and tighten the lower abdominals to do this properly and it is certainly one thing that took me many years before I could do it correctly.

We finished up class with five katas of our choice, making sure that we do them with the principles that we focused on earlier in class.

I often write about principles that sound rudimentary but you would be surprised how many students, including some of the higher ranks need this type of training. It’s easy to get into bad habits and even harder to fix them and classes like these always helps me realize that no matter how long I train, I still have to correct my form.