Today was an interesting class.  We had a couple of visiting Sensei’s.  Sensei Wail and Sensei Patel came to torture, I mean train us with Sensei Noia and Sensei Gatch.

I really enjoy class when we do kicking drills and we spent about about half the class doing them so I enjoyed it a lot.  We started by holding on to the wall and doing side thrust kicks.  The part that made this drill really hard was because Sensei Noia made us hold a pad on our leg when it was extended.  Oddly, I didn’t have as hard of a time as usual so I am hoping that there is some improvement in my hips.

After that came more kicking drills such as roundhouse and side thrust kick over the pads standing on the floor and another move where we balance the pad on our knee before throwing a side thrust kick.

We then put on the pads and worked on some sparring.  Sensei Noia had us work stand in two lines facing each other.  He then had three people stand to the side while he gave the rest a number between one and three.  The three people had to go between the two lines of people and who had the number of the person given to them by Sensei Noia and they attacked them as they passed.  For example, if I had number two, I would attack the second person.

Good class overall but I really like the kicking drills the most.

Do you ever have days where you just don’t feel well and class is going to be really hard? That’s how I felt before class but oddly, things turned around really fast.

Warm up went well but I still felt slow for some reason. As we were stretching, Sensei Noia gave out the previous weekends test results and my son was awarded his 4th kyu. He wasn’t feel well for his test on Sunday but ended up getting three stripes, which in our club, is very good. I cannot believe the how much he has improved over the years and how good his Karate looks now.

Next came torture for those who have not tested yet, including me. We did some kihon to get the blood flowing and for some reason, Sensei Gatch thought that push ups would be fun for everyone. We ended up doing 60 (4 sets of 15 reps) by the time class was over. I didn’t have any issues with the push ups and for some reason, they got easier as I did more.

We did the normal kihon with the various blocks and reverse punch. After those, Sensei Noia sent us with Sensei Gatch to work on our advanced kihon and kata. We also did front side thrust kick and roundhouse kick and then roundhouse kick and front side thrust kick. I was really nervous when I found out I had those moves on my exam since I never really practiced them but they seem to be getting easier each time I do them as long as I am warmed up.

I felt that my knife hand block, front snap kick and nukite is getting better. The issues that I was having with my kicks seems to be gone or at least minimized. We then did outward block, horse stance with elbow strike and backfist. I am having a bit of a problem shifting from the front stance into the horse stance but nothing serious from what I can tell.

Then came kata. We only did a couple since we ran out of time.

By the end of class, I was feeling really good except that my hips were very sore but it was a complete 180 turnaround from how I felt before class started. I always felt that working is the best medicine and I guess tonight it was.

We warmed up a little longer than normal because the gym was cold.

Sensei had us all get a foam pad and had us stand it up in front of us for kicking drills.  He had us work on side thrust kick to the side, side thrust kick to the front and roundhouse kick.  He then had us put the pad on our heads and had us do 10 front snap kicks without letting the pad fall off.  I was pretty happy that I was able to throw some decent kicks without letting the pad fall.

Sensei Noia split us up into groups and had us start with one-step sparring.  We did a lot of drills with our partner.  I still feel pretty good about my one-step and think that it is better than it ever had been.  We then did an anchorman type drill and had one person, actually four who were testing the next day, stand at the front of a line and the rest of us threw the attack of our choice and they had to block and counter.  I got into the line that my son was in front of and he did really good.

After our one-step, Sensei had us work on some basics.  We spent extra time on back stance, knife hand block, front snap kick with front stance nukite.  We also worked on front stance with outward block, horse stance with elbow strike and backfist.  I am still having some issues with my back stance front snap kick.  I really can’t get and height on the kick and hope that it will be good enough for my upcoming exam.

After that, we finished up the class with some kata.  We did Heian Godan as a group and then Tekki Shodan.  My kata felt pretty good and I am more conscious of my stance height than before.

It was a good class.