Sensei Noia had us work on kata specific kihon today.

Warm up with some kata…

We started with our own kata first.  Next we did the first five moves of every kata that we knew in succession.  When we finished the first kata, we moved right into the next kata.

Stances and kihon…

For the next drills, we got a partner and stood across from them.  We started in a ready stance and did punches.  Next, we turned our toes in and did more punches, then we stood in sanchin dachi and did punches again.  We also cat stance, horse stance, front stance and cross leg stance with punches.  This was a serious leg workout.

Kata parts….

Next we worked on parts of kata.  We started in a horse stance and did the twisting blocked to the left and right.  Then came horse stance with palm heel strike.  Then double and triple movements like Jion.  Then palm heel to double block back stance with hook punch.  Then the same move but with the rising elbow strike about the double block.

We finished class with some bunkai.  We did stop a punch with a front hand block, grab the back of our partners head and smash it into our elbow then crank the neck and throw them to the floor.  Needless to say, we did this movement really slowly.

Sensei Cieplik spent a lot of time working on various kihon movements today.  If our kihon improves our kata will improve too.

Strike with the leg….

We finished the normal warm up and moved into knee strike follow with front snap kick.  After that, we did front snap kick with front punch.  Sensei noticed that many people were falling into the front punch instead of putting the kick foot down with control and pushing the front leg forward with the punch.  Because of that, Sensei had us do a double front snap kick followed by triple punch but after the kicks, we put our kicking foot down near our stationary leg and then pushe the front leg out and punched.  I don’t remember ever doing that particular drill before.  I remember single kick with triple punch but not double kicks.

Hips…

For our next drill, Sensei had us get in a light fighting stance.  From there, he had us switch our feet really fast.  The idea was to us the hips to switch the position of the front and back feet.  To explain this better, Sensei had us pull the front leg back really fast and throw a kick with the back leg that became the front leg.  This was extremely hard on the hips.

There is another drill that we worked on that I am having a really hard time explaining here.  We were in a stationary fighting stance, threw a reverse punch and then used the momentum of the hips to step us forward and throw an other reverse punch.   As the first reverse punch flies, the hips swing the back leg forward making us step and then throw the second reverse punch.

Break your kihon into parts….

Even though, I have done this before, the light bulb seems to have come on for me tonight.  When doing our kihon drills, Sensei had us add a move between the move.  For example, when doing a rising block, we stepped forward into a blocking leg stance block, reaching with the front hand as if it is a strike, then moving into the front stance and doing the rising block.  The addition of the move between the moves makes the kihon feel much different, more focused and more kime.  We also did this with downward and inward block.

Lots of kata…

We finished up class working on kata.  I was really spent by the time we started doing the kata and I felt that my kata’s were not my best.  I did a Jion that I hope I never do again and my Bassai Dai I am sure did not look much better.  I even felt like I had two left feet with the Heian kata’s too.

Even if my kata wasn’t what I wanted, it was a great class and I learned a lot, again.

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Sensei Noia is getting us back into sparring mode.   He is having us work on our sparring basics since we haven’t done much sparring over the last few months.

Kicks or punches….

Sensei had us work on some different drills that I do not remember doing much in the past.  We started with one partner attacking with only hand movements and the other with only leg movements.  This makes us pay extra attention to distance when doing our attacks.  We also did some free sparring where we could use any attacks we wanted.  I really need to be less robotic when sparring.  I was much better at my exam but for some reason, I am really tight in class again.

Hit those pads….

After the sparring drills, Sensei had us each get a pad and a partner.  For the rest of class, we hit the pads, hard!  We were able to do back fist, knife hand, hammer fist, and punches.  I hope that we hit the pads more often.