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.

Today was a great class. We spent almost half the class working on one step sparring.  I really feel that we don’t do enough one step in class.  I feel that one-step is a huge part of self defense training which allows us to use our heads without getting our blocks knocked off.  All the flashy moves are cool but one step feels like reality to me.

We started out working on our standard six moves which include front punch to the face and stomach, front snap kick, side thrust kick, roundhouse kick and spinning back kick all with the common block and counter moves.

We then worked on any block and counter of our choice.  For example, step back with rising block when your partner is doing a front punch to the face.  This is something that I have been working on for long time and it is all timing.  If you step back too slow, you get punched in the face and if you step back too fast, you get punched in the face.

Sensie Noia wanted us to work on our blocks during one-step. He wants us to make sure that our blocks are effective and that we are just not moving out of the way.  His point was many students blocks are weak because they know that they won’t get hit when working on one-step but in real life, attackers don’t punch in a straight line.

Next, we worked on some basics, moving forward with punches and kicks and then combination movements.  We only did a few basics before moving on to kata.

We finished up class working on kata for those that are testing but with a twist for the Shodans.  We did Heian Yondan in mirror image. We then worked on the kata of our choice which was Bassai Sho and Gojushiho Sho for me and class was over much too soon.

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.