This was one of the largest classes that I have ever seen in the Glenview dojo.  There were many of Sensei Cieplik’s students, both past and current, who came to have one last class with Sensei before he retires.   The nice part for me was many of my first Sensei’s that I started training with were in the is class training with us.  The spirit in the dojo was at its peak today.

After our warm up, we did a drill where we started in a front stance, brought the front leg knee up, drove forward off the back leg from the hips and not the chest.  The idea was to move forward while bringing the front leg off the floor.  We did the same drill but this time we did a front snap kick with the front leg and then followed that with a rear leg front snap kick.

Next came the basics.  We did downward block, inward block, rising block and outward block all with reverse punch.  After that we did outward block, jab and reverse punch making sure to use no hip turn on the outward block.  The reason for no hip on the outward block is because, when we stop forward the hip is already in the perfect 45 degree angle.

We then partnered up with a pad and did loose hook punch many times.  The idea was to drop in a horse stance to make the power for the punch and also angle the punch in and down.

We then did Heian Shodan three times, Jion three times and Heian Sandan three times.  One very important part of Jion was the first move.  Think of dropping down and moving the left leg back as holding ground and not retreating.  Your upper body stays in the same place because you drop down on the front leg and then stabilize your stance with the back leg.

This class went by very quickly because I, along with everyone else knew that this is one of our last classes with Sensei.

The theme of Karate class today was many kicks.  When I say many, I am talking almost 45 minutes of kicks.  We did all different kicks and when I thought we were done, we did more kicks.  Did I say we did a lot of kicks?

We started with standing kicks to warm up.  We did front snap kick to the front, side thrust kick to the side and back kick to the back.  We did the same and then added roundhouse kick to the end of those.  Next came hook kick and round kick, then hook kick with roundhouse kick and hook kick all in one count.

The next kicking drill was four kicks around the clock.  We started out facing forward doing front snap kick, side thrust kick, roundhouse kick and hook kick, then turn clockwise to the 10 minute position, then 20 minute, all the way around the clock in 10 minute increments.

We did the next drill from a front stance moving forward doing hook kick and roundhouse kick.  We then did front snap kick, side thrust kick, back kick, roundhouse kick and hook kick.

After that, Sensei has us grab the wall with one hand and do side thrust kicks.  We started did low and high kicks pulling the foot back to the start position as fast as possible.

Kata to the end…

We spent the rest of the class working on our kata.  For those doing Gojushiho Sho, we did the first six drills going up to the cross leg stance with the low punch.  We then did the entire kata four more times and class was over

In this class, Sensei Cieplik shared how to keep our posture when moving forward in a back stance while keeping our face intact and some help for our Kyu rank students.

Salad bowls and draw hand

After our normal kicking warm up we moved into our kihon.  Moving forward and back we did downward block, inward block and rising block all with reverse punch.  We then did inward block, elbow strike and back fist making sure to use the entire body and not just the arm to do the elbow strike.  Sensei told us to focus on making sure to drop our body in a salad bowl motion when doing this move.  The draw hand also pays an important role in making power for both the elbow strike and the back fist.  If the draw hand is loose, I feel you will lose at least half your power when doing your techniques.

Next, we worked on back stance with knife hand block and then the same move but we added the front snap kick.  Sensei saw something here that he wanted us to improve upon so the next drill was moving forward in a back stance with a partner.

Keep your face intact

Sensei had us work with our partner to help us improve our back stances.  The idea was to have one partner stand with their hand out in front at head level and the other partner was to step forward, into a back stance, without getting hit in the face.  The idea here is to move in but keep your head back forcing you to move from your hips, not your upper body.  As you can imagine, if you step forward with your upper body you get hit in the face.  This is one of those drills that you learn very quickly or you learn the hard way.

Step and punch but keep your posture

For the next drill, we did some simple pad drills, stepping in with front punches. The key was to keep our posture and our body upright while using our hips to punch and not our chest and shoulders.  I am sure that many of you have seen a pattern here over years about punching with your body and the drill above is the exact point that Sensei has been making for all that time.  Let the lower body throw the punch.  The lower body creates the power, the power is transfered through the core to the upper body and then out the end of the fist.  It seems easy to explain but difficult to execute.

Help your fellow Karate students

We finished class watching our Kyu rank students do kata and giving them advice on what they are doing well and what they need to improve on.  One thing about doing this that I truly is everyone learns something when helping others learn.  You learn to interact with people and share your skills and you also might find things that someone else does that you want to do in your kata.  The key is help others not as an authority figure but as a fellow student who was at the same rank at one time too.

Keep you teeth in your mouth

The main takeaway for all of us is to keep our face intact.  I know that I am not the best looking Karate student but I would rather keep my teeth in my mouth and my nose from getting any bigger and I think you do too, so keep your face away from your opponents fist.