Excellent class.  This type of class is one of my favorites and I would be happy doing these more often.

Kata…

For our warm up, Sensei noia had us start with Heian Shodan and work our way up to our own belt level kata.  He had us keep doing our kata until the black belts finished all of their katas too.  I ended up doing a total of 14 or 15 katas.  Even though I was really breathing hard, I still had something left.  I am hoping that this is a sign that my cold is gone.

Anchorman…

Sensei had us get in line behind one of our black belts and go through anchor man drills.  I had a really good time and felt better than even with my sparring for some reason.  For one of the first times, I had a different type of confidence.  Normally I am hesitant about going in and attacking but today was different.  I just need to find out why it was different and how I can stay in that place whenever I spar.

Circle of doom…

This is a neat drill.  Sensei Noia has everyone get in a circle and one person stands in the middle.  He then gives each of the people in the circle a number and then calls it out and that person attacks the person in the center.  It gets really interesting when the people behind the person in the middle has their number called.  If you are in the  middle, you need eyes in the back of your head but you learn pretty fast to pay attention and use all of your senses.

It was a hard class but really good.

For almost two weeks, I have been fighting a cold or flu of some sort.  Because of this, I haven’t been posting much here since I haven’t taken many classes.

Today was my first day back at class in a week and I could only make it half way through before I had to stop.  My lungs were on fire after only a half hour of some warm up kata.  It’s too bad since the class was really good with a lot of good sparring and self defense work.

Kata…

Sensei Plocharczyk had us start with our own kata.  I did Bassai Dai.  We then did Heian Sandan, then Heian Nidan, then Tekki Shodan, then Jion, then Heian Shodan and finally our own kata again.  Between a couple of the kata’s, Sensei had us do either pushups or situps and then sprint across the dojo and back.

I could normally do this without breathing too hard but I just could not catch my breath and had to sit off to the side.  It took me at least 15 minutes to get my breathing back to normal but it settled down and all was good.

Sensei Plocharczyk has been spending a lot of time trying to help us understand how to move forward with double reverse punch.  We have been working on this drill for almost five weeks now.

Don’t think about it more than you need to…

The simplest way to explain this drill is like so;  Front a left foot forward fighting stance, take a half step with the right leg and punch with the right hand, then step all the way through and punch with the left hand.  It is a really simple move as long as you don’t think too much about it.

Sparring combination…

Next, Sensei has us work on some more combination drills.  We worked on shift with reverse punch,  rear leg roundhouse kick and reverse punch.  This is a wild combination that covers a lot of ground.

After that, we worked on shift with reverse punch, step with reverse punch and then rear leg roundhouse kick.  I have used this combination in the past and it is pretty effective for me.

Hold it for two minutes…

Sensei had us finish up with a little bit of conditioning.  We had to hold the plank position for two minutes.  I was pretty proud that I was able to hold it for the full time without cheating.  It was hard but good.