Excellent class.

I was there early to stretch again but for some reason my mind was cloudy. It was hard to get my mind in to class but after a while, it started working again.

We started with kihon. We moved into a horse stance and did front punches, double front punches, rising block, downward blocks, inward blocks and outward blocks. Holding that stance is always a challenge and often painful. We then started doing some different combinations. We stood in a horse stance, moved the left leg forward into a front stance with a downward block and then draw back into a horse stance. We also did something similar where we were in the horse stance, move into a front stance with reverse punch and then back into the horse stance.

We then worked on some back stance work. Moving backward into a back stance we did a knife hand block and then moved forward into a back stance with a knife hand block. The moves weren’t terribly hard but the mental part of moving the correct hand for the block was slowing me down.

After that, we split up for kata. The second, first Kyu and black belts went on one side and the rest below went to the other side. We spent the rest of class working on Jion. That is a very cool kata as far as I am concerned. It just feels right to me for some reason and almost as if it was made for me. The motions and the power really make it feel stronger than the other kata I have done. I do have to do some work on getting my hips to move better but overall it felt good.

I know that I had good workout because I really feel it in my hips but that’s ok with me.

Very hard classes again.

The first class was a lot of basics.  We did some different combinations.  One in particular was moving forward, reverse punch with a downward block.  The reason behind this was to get our hips working better since many of us are not twisting enough.  Moving from hips forward to hips sideway was very hard but at one point it must have done something because my hip made the loudest pop I have ever heard.  I was mentally tough to do the moves in that order too.

For some reason, my feet were very sore.  I had a pain like they were on fire but it went away after a five minutes or so.  I was focusing on gripping the floor with my toes and I think that might be part of my foot pain.

We finished with some kata but with a twist.  We did Heian Shodan the normal way and then backwards or reverse order.  We did it with our Sensei first and then on our own.  I ended up facing the wrong direction in the end.  We then did all of the Heian kata and then ended with Tekki Shodan since 4th Kyu was the highest rank in the class.

In the second class, we worked on some more basics and one-step.  The basics were similar to those that we did in the first class but we added some kicks.  The kicks got progressively harder.  We started with some front kicks and then progressed to front kick, side thrust and rear kick.  We then had to do six kicks with each leg and by the time we were done with those, I could hardly stand without loosing my balance.

We spent the rest of the class working on one-step but not the normal one-step.  We were able to bunkai from our kata.  For example, we did a back fist grab with a side snap kick from Heian Nidan.  We started using knife hand blocks from Heian Shodan but I was having a hard time doing them even though my Sensei must have showed me four times.  It was very hard to grasp.

Excellent class.

We did a lot of drills including a couple of new ones. Interesting move; step forward downward block, switch feet, downward block with reverse punch. It wasn’t very hard to do physically but mentally it was extremely hard. Another new move was front leg front snap kick, rear leg front snap kick, put the leg back behind and reverse punch.

We worked on some turning drills. The idea was to pull the front leg into a cat stance and turn on the heel then push out the front foot. It’s another thing that sounds really easy in type but hard to execute. The idea is to squeeze the glutes and tighten the core. To explain a little more, use the glutes to pull the front leg back and then tighten the core to stabilize the stance. Sadly, I don’t recall ever doing that before and I am going to lot of repetitions to get that move down better.

One other move, that felt good, step half way into a front punch but throw a jab and then finish stepping and follow up with the front punch.

We finished up with a few Heian Shodan. Again, the idea was to turn on the heels and pay more attention to attacking with the legs instead of the arms.

Weight workout: More to come…