Shotokanplanet.org

This is a log of my journey to Shotokan Karate Shodan and beyond.

9/13/07 – Thursday Karate class and homework.

by 4 Comments

Homework! I had to type my homework early here so that I don’t forget what Sensei gave us to work on each day.

Starting in a front stance, we do a rear leg front snap kick, hold after the kick, then  bend back leg, move in to cat stance while bending the front leg, “pet the mouse” or keep the weight on the back leg and lightly and gently reach forward with front foot, move in to front stance and throw a front punch while keeping the hips straight.

No that I have that written down, here is the lowdown on class.

We started off with our normal warm up doing many kicks and finally, I think my roundhouse kicks are starting to look like roundhouse kicks instead of just throwing my legs out in to thin air like not too long ago.

We spent most of the class working on stances.  Even though we did a lot of punches and blocks the real meat of the lesson was our foot work and attention to blocking the groin area with our legs.  Sensei made up pay extra attention to brining the knees together when moving both forward and back.

We spent a good amount of time working on our homework in class so that we would all understand what Sensei was looking for.

One the same note, we spent some time working on keeping the groin protected while turning from on direction to another.  When moving backward, we would turn our back foot the direction that we wanted to end up facing while bringing the front leg in to what was similar to a cat stance, bringing the knees together and then pushing the front leg out to move in to a front stance.

Oddly enough, I don’t recall any kicking drills except for the warm ups.

We ended up finishing class with some kata.  We did Heian Shodan but with a little twist, Sensei had us do the kata with the moves that we worked on in the drills.  When paying attention to protecting the groin area, it does slow the kata down a bit but it really made me focus on each move and my technique.  I also felt much more powerful for some reason and I assume it was related to the extra focus.

Sensei made a comment about kata and the way it is performed today.  His point was that it used to take almost twice as long to perform the kata as it does today.  He mentioned that competition kata is done very fast where as in the past, kata was done with a two count after each move that showed power and kime.  Instead of the blinding speed that many competitors have today between moves, after each move there a pause or pose as Sensei said.

Class was very good.

9/11/07 – Tuesday Karate class.

by Leave a Comment

Some classes are really hard and some are just plain old torture.

I knew that class was going to be a tough one when we started class with horse stances.   We did just about every move, outward block, inward block, rising block, front punch, double front punch, and triple punch, all from a horse stance.  We did sets of 10 and no rest in between movements.  At one point, I think we did 120 moves without a break.  We also did, from a horse stance of course, front snap kick, come back down in to a horse stance and throw a front punch then switch legs and repeat.

Then we did, you guessed it, more horse stance work. Not only did we do even more movements, we had to hold the stances while being timed.  It was unreal and at one point, I had to close my eyes and try to put my mind in a different place because my legs were burning.  I do have to admit, since I have been seeing my chiropractor, I can hold my horse stances much lower and wider.

To finish up class, we worked on kata.  We started with a couple of Heian Shodan’s and then, Sensei had us do all of the kata in sequence starting with Heian Shodan all the way up to our current belt kata.  At that point, I was totally spent and I had a hard time even putting my shoes on but I am sure that the next time we do a class like that, it will be a little easier.

9/8/07 – Saturday Karate class.

by Leave a Comment

Great class.

We started out with some sparring. My wife didn’t bring her pads today so we ended up doing one-step sparring. I could not believe it was me doing the one-step drills. I was able to move so easily and effortlessly, I shocked myself. I was able to get myself far out of the way, very quickly and finish up with great focus and power. Having my hips working the right way made a huge impact on this drill.

After that, we broke up in to groups and Sensei Noia took the 4th and 5th Kyu’s for kata. We spent the rest of the class working on our kata and he had us go through Tekki Shodan. I found that I was doing a couple of my moves the wrong way, doing certain blocks with two hands instead of one and needing to get lower in my stance, and now have some work to do but this class was very enlightening. I do know that I need to focus more on bending lower in my horse stance but this will come with time since I can go lower than ever before.

With rank testing only a couple months away, I am glad that I was able to see my mistakes now and still have time to correct them.