Sensei Cieplik had us start with a lot kicks for our warm up.  It is normally cold in the dojo so the extra kicks do help getting our body temperature up.  He often gives us some interesting combination’s and today’s special group was front snap kick, back kick, roundhouse kick, hook kick and front snap kick.

Next came a few more kicks with front leg front snap kick with rear leg front snap kick.  The next move was front leg front snap kick and then put that leg behind and do a rear leg front kick.  That was a real brain twister.  After that came knee strike followed with front snap kick.  That move sounds easy but the idea is the do the knee strike, pull the hips back and then do the front snap kick.  It’s actually two moves not one.

Now that we are warm…

This was one of the neatest drills that I have done.  We started in a high front stance, then threw a front hand jab, then a reverse punch, then a front snap kick and from that position, keep the knee up from the kicking leg, squeeze the elbow of the opposite arm to that knee, tense the core and turn 180 degrees on the ball of the support foot block and then finish with a reverse punch.

Next, we spent on time working on our back stances with knife hand block, front snap kick and nukite.

Kata…

We started with Jion.  Sensei had us work on the transition from the high and low double block into the horse stance with hook punch.  Instead of shifting when doing that move, Sensei said to pivot on heal of the front leg from the back stance into the horse stance.  The idea is to pivot, drop down and then settle (lock the core) into the stance.

We spent the rest of the class working the Heian katas.

Sensei Brien had us work on some simple sparring drills for the entire class.  Since my sparring has not kept up with my kihon and kata, this type of class is always welcome to me.

Various sparring basics…

We started with shift forward and jab.  Next came, shift forward, reverse punch, shift back, shift back again and reverse punch.  Next was shift, shift reverse punch.  After that we did a little more complicated combination which consists of shift in, reverse punch and roundhouse kick.  That last drill was particularity interesting to me since I couldn’t think of doing a it before because of my lack of flexibility.   I was flowing very smooth for me today and I was pretty happy with what I was able to do.

Sensei Brien said that we need to learn to read our partners mind on when they are going to attack.  We spent a good amount of time working on just that.  As soon as we felt that our partner was going to attack, we would try to attack first.  I had a couple of different partners and some of them had tells where as others had to move before I reacted.

It was a good class.