Today was the last Karate class that I will take in 2013.  It was a relatively easy class, compared to many of the exam preparation classes over the last three months but it was still good and as always, something new was learned.

Use your partner as a target…

After the warm up, we partnered up, stood across from one another, in a front stance and did alternating front snap kicks to each others stomach right at the knot of our belts.  After that, we did two kicks of our choice that included front snap kick, side thrust kick, roundhouse kick and hook kick, without putting our foot down between kicks.  We did the same but this time it was three kicks in a row without putting the kicking foot down.  We did this with both legs forward for a total of 60 leg movements on each leg or 240 total kicks.

Take a moves from your kata and do them in one-step sparring…

 For the next 20 minutes or so, we worked on “non” standard one-step sparring.  Because of exams for many weeks before, we spent a lot of time working on exam one-step but today, we got to stretch our legs (and arms) by doing one-step from the Heian katas and Tekki Shodan.  We have done this in the past and it is always interesting because you have to think much faster because it is not a structured block and counter attack.

The idea behind this drill is to pick various blocks and counter attacks that make our katas effective.  For example, if your partner is attacking with a solar plexus punch, you can step back into a back stance with an outward block and counter with a reverse punch like the first two moves for Heian Godan.  We often do our kata moves without really understanding what we are doing and this is a good exercise to help make our kata performance better.

Leave a comment below if you have worked with moves from your katas like this and let us know what kata and which movements you did for a particular attack.

I think Sensei Noia’s goal was to make our legs feel like jello today and if that was the goal, he was successful.  With stance and kicks, it wasn’t too hard to reach that goal.

Pivot, punch, pivot block and punch….

We started class in a horse stance then pivoting to the left and right right with a reverse punch.  We then did the same but with a different technique each time which included rising block, inward block, outward block and downward block all with reverse punch.

Timed pad attacks….

Next, we partnered up and got a pad.  We haven’t hit anything in a while so it was good to do it but I could tell that I haven’t been hitting enough.  We started with front snap kicks to the pad, then side thrust kicks and roundhouse kicks.  After that, it was hammer fist time, then back fist, then knife hand and any punch we wanted.   We finished up these pad drills by doing timed attacks on the pad for 1 minute 30 seconds, 1 minute, 30 seconds and 15 seconds.  The timed drills are always a crowd pleaser.

Leg circles….

We then took our partner and our pad over to the wall where one of us held the pad in front and the other held on to the wall with one hand, brought our leg up like the end of the side thrust kick and then circled our foot in both directions around the pad.  This is a torturous drill and I am certain that I will be walking funny tomorrow because of it.

Back up against the wall….

We ended class with our backs to the wall in a low cat stance holding for 1 minute on each leg. This drill was different because you are doing a wall sit with most of your weight on only one leg.  This drill did contribute to the jello legs feeling that I mentioned at the beginning of this post.