This was an interesting class.
Sensei Plocharczyk led the class and started us out with some kata for a warm up. We started with Heian Shodan and continued all the way to Bassai Dai. I was able to keep up without much trouble until we got to Bassai Dai where I was lost. I felt pretty good after I did Tekki Shodan since Sensei said that it looked much better than before. He said I was much more relaxed and I didn’t muscle through it like I used to do.
After the katas, Sensei had us do something a little different. We spent the rest of the class working on advance one-step sparring. The attacks were the same, but the counters were different.
The first group of counters was using different moves than the normal reverse punch or front punch. I used hammer fist as my counter. My opponent moved forward with jodan oi-ziki and I moved to the outside and countered with a tetsui to jodan. This move was pretty effective since my opponent would still be moving forward as my hammer fist would strike his face. My opponent used a similar approach and countered with a ridge hand.
Next, we worked on countering with only one kick. We didn’t need to block, just get out of the way and kick. For this, my opponent would attack with a front punch to the head. I would move to the outside and hit him with a front snap kick to the stomach. Moving to the inside would allow for a solid low kick to the groin area.
We then worked on countering with two kicks. This was a little more difficult for me since my roundhouse kick is not the best. My opponent would attack with a front snap kick, I would then counter with a round house to his stomach and a low front snap kick to his groin from behind.
Above is just a few examples of what we did. There are so many different counters that can be used such as knife hand block and strike to name one. One of the things that made this class work well was we did all the moves very slowly so that we could fully understand the movements instead of flying through it as full speed.
Good class!