Karate slow, Karate fast

I always have a good class with Sensei Noia but today was exceptional.  For the last few months, he has been working on training drills that we haven’t done before.  Today’s class was a good example and not only did it give me some insight into how I should be training but a sore body to go with it.

Move slow

The first drill we worked on was standing upright, taking in a deep breath and then punching while exhaling very slowly.  The idea was to grab the floor with our feet, punch slow much like Hangetsu and then at the end, tense everything and relax.  It sounds very simple and straight forward but doing it is another story.

We did the same slow breathing drills standing, in a horse stance, in a back stance with a knife hand block, in a front stance with a punch and in a horse stance with a downward block all stationary.  We then did the same but moving forward with the front stance and front punch, the back stance with knife hand block, horse stance with palm heel and horse stance with the dropping strike from Jion.  This goal was to not move up and down between techniques and still move slowly with a strong, full body tense at the end and then instant relax.

Move slow, then fast

The next drills we worked on involved Taikyoku Shodan.  We did the first kata very slowly with the same action as the drills above and then the second time, we did each movement as fast as possible.  We did the same kata but with alternating slow and fast movements and then again with alternating fast and slow movements.

For example, the first time was a slow downward block followed with a fast punch, then a slow turn and downward block followed with a fast punch.  The second time was a fast downard block and slow punch and a fast turn with downward block and slow punch and so on.  These different slow and fast movements changed the dynamic of the kata.  I was surprised at how fast I was able to move after a slow movement.

We did the entire kata, one time with all the power we could put behind it and again with as much speed as possible.  We did the same with a kata of our choice and finished up with two more katas giving everything we had left.

It all comes together

Something that I realized after class was, we have been working up to this moment over the last few weeks of classes.  There were things that Sensei had us work on over the past four classes that were all put together in one class today.  Many times, we go through each class doing but not paying attention to the reason we are doing and then, after time, it all comes together.