Sensie Noia was going to have everyone do some sparring drills but there were a few students who weren’t able to do it so they went off to the side with Sensei Gatch to do some kata.  I went with them and did some kata too.

We started with a couple or few Heian Godan’s.  This was to get us warmed up and to allow one of the purple belts to practice their belt kata.  Shortly after, we moved on to Jion.  We started out working on parts of the kata up to the ki-ai.  After that, we worked on the next part and got good advice and corrections along the way.

We then did the kata, as a group.  Not just as a group but as a synchronized.  This was much harder than I imagined.  Just keeping pace with my partners was very hard and I was ending up a step or two behind every once in a while.  Getting the timing from watching the others was really tough.

Good class.

I always like class that starts with kata.

Sensei Gatch took the purple and brown belts. We started with Heian Godan. Sensei Gatch trains kata with the group in a torturous way. He will often make us do the same move over again many time but he will also have the entire group hold a stance or movement will he corrects someone else. Most of the group, not all of them, ends up breaking their stance and rising up but I try my very best to hold my stances the entire time.

Next, we moved on to Tekki Shodan. For some reason, when I do this kata, it puts a lot of stress on my feet and the outside of my calves. I need to analyze my stance and see if I am pushing too hard on the outside of my feet or something. There was one point where he much have had us hold the horse stance at least three minutes. When it was finally time to do the next move, I almost fell over because my legs felt as if they were locked in the horse stance position.

We then moved on to Jion and the focus was all on me since I was the only third kyu in the class today. Sensei Gatch found a mistake that I was making the first move. Instead of moving my arms in a circular blocking motion, I was just moving them forward more like a push.  I am going to have to spend some time working on correcting that movement since I have been doing it wrong for some time now.  I then did the front snap kick with triple punch.  He said that my front snap kicks look really good.  I then did all the moves to the first ki-ai and Sensei told me that I need to use my hips more.  When my stances are lower, my hips don’t turn like they should.  I guess I have some things to work on but that’s alright with me.

Next, we put on our pads and spent the rest of the class doing sparring drills.  We partnered up and worked on shifting drills.  We started with single shifts and then came double and triple shifts.  The idea was to help work on our distancing and timing.  We spent some time working on attack and counters when shifting.  The sparring drills are much more basic than those that we work on during advanced class on Friday but I welcome them since sparring not my best skill at this point.

This class was a little different.  We spent the entire time doing sparring drills but only with a few techniques or concepts.

All of the class focused on three way to attack.  The first way was to throw a combination to make our opponent open up and create an opening, the second was to move or slap their hand out of the way to create an opening and the last was to use the angle to get around their defense and attack the side or back.

With the first drill, our partner would stand in a fighting stance, we would throw a jab to the face to get them to block and then follow it up with a reverse punch to the abdomen.  We could use many different moves to get the same effect.

In the next drill, we would slap their front hand out of the way to create the opening.  This allowed a follow up with a punch of some type or even a roundhouse kick if fast enough.  Slapping the hand to the inside or outside determined what attack could be used.

The final drill was using the angle to make an opening.  The idea is to move off center and attack the back with a roundhouse kick or the side of head with a punch or even the back of the head with a back fist.  This is much harder for me to execute especially when shifting.  The change from moving in and out to side to side is something that I need to work on.