I spent about 30 minutes warming up before class. I did my usual stretches and it did seem to help my kicks.

Class started with the normal warm up kicks. After that, we did our basics but instead of doing them in the normal five moves with the left leg forward and then five moves with the right leg forward we did left leg rising block, step back and then right leg rising block. It was the same moves but different because I had to think to keep my feet in the place.

We did something new, we did a rear leg front snap kick, then put it back behind, and then a front leg front snap kick followed by a rear leg front snap kick. The moves felt really powerful with throwing the front leg kick and then steping forward with the rear leg kick. We also did the same type of move but with a roundhouse kick.

From horse stance we did, side thrust kick, then like a side snap kick but pointing the knee to the front and then normal side snap kick. Pointing the knee to the front felt much different.

We also did some close stance moves. We started with a front snap kick but we had to keep both feet withing the width of a floor tile when landing.

The class was great but I was so sore. My right hip felt like it was hit with a hammer. I could not fall asleep until finally, something felt like it popped and all the pain went away.

I did a quick workout.  My hips were sore from stretching for a long time before class yesterday and from all the kicks that we did in class.

Side leg raises – 15
Slow side thrust kicks – 15
Bent side leg raise – 15

The bent side leg raise was suggestion from my Sensei.  He told me get into the start of a roundhouse kick and raise my leg up and down.

Very hard class.

We spent most the class working on kicks.  We warmed by front snap kicking our partner.  Then we did double front snap kicks, then double front snap kicks followed with a roundhouse.  Then we did tripple roundhouse kicks at different heights.  First kick was at knee level, second was at belt of higher and last was anywhere above chest.  For the first time, I was able to kick my wife in the face.  Luckily if was very slow and controlled but either way, it was at face level.

We did a little more leg work and then moved on to some punching and blocking.  We did moves similar to three step sparring.  We did punch and block to the face, to the chest and to the belt or stomach level.  It was a good drill.

We finished up the class with some kata.  We did Heian Shodan, Heian Nidan and Heian Sandan as a group.  Next we picked any kata we wanted so I choose Tekki Shodan.  I felt pretty good and I think my horse stance was better than usual.  We ended doing our kata up to the first kai and then lined up.

I used to feel out of place in the advanced classes but for some reason, I don’t feel like that now and even though I do not look as good as some of the others, I don’t look bad either.