Good class.

We spent much of the time working on basics. Our Sensei felt that our punches were not well focused so we spent the entire class working on good focus.

We had our parnter hold our thier finger and we had to punch at it. The idea was to punch without hitting it but also have our partner make sure that we were accurate. The next drill had our partner hold their hands in a circle and we had to punch and not hit their hands on the way in or out or we would have to do pushups. There was a possible 300 pushups tied to 50 punches and out of all the punches, I only had to do nine pushups. Luckily, my punches are pretty accurate from all of the one step sparring drills that I did in the past.

We then finished up with pushup torture. Our Sensei had us do 5 sets of 10 pushups. The first was hands close together in a triangle, next was arms wide apart, next was hand at our sides, and then we 10 each side of one arm up high and the other low. I did a lot of tricep work that day at the gym so the pushups were a little rough. We also some dynamic lunges and a little ab work to round things out.

Weight workout: More to come….

I worked with my wife on Jion today.  I did all the moves up to the first kai eight times.  Even doing just those few moves is very tiring.  I am putting a lot of power behind those moves and it feels great but I am going to have to really work on my conditioning if I ever plan to use that much power throughout the entire kata.  The kime in Jion feels much different than in other kata for some reason.  At the end of each move, my body is tensing much different for some reason.  The two moves before the kai, the rising block and front punch, feels like it could stop a truck.  My Sensei’s told me that Jion would be a good kata for me and so far, I agree.

I also did a slow motion Heian Shodan, like Sensei Noia suggested.   Doing each move slowly and holding the stances for three seconds each really makes me focus on my stances.  I am also considering doing the kata with some extra weight so that I can strengthen my legs even more after they begin to feel easy.

I spent a little over and hour stretching while my son took class.  I did the splits against a wall, hamstring stretches and some other moves.  My hips felt pretty loose afterward and most the rest of the day.

At night, I did some kicks with the pad.  In order to get my kicks up higher and have more accuracy, I had my wife a thick pad and I did 15 roundhouse kicks with each leg.  My right leg can kick almost chest high with good control and power but my left leg is only about belt level and I am having a hard time getting my hip turned over to complete the kick.  I am also having a problem returning to my stance after I complete the kick with the left leg.  I am going to continue practicing every other day or so until I get them right.

I also did 15 side thrust kicks.  Those were better than my roundhouse kicks but I was turning my back too far over when kicking with the left leg.

My kicks have come a long way in the three years that I have been doing Karate but they still have a way to go.