Our Sensei taught us so many things in this class, I am having a hard time remembering everything. I really need to bring a notebook with me to class.

We did the normal kicking warm up and then moved in to downward block with reverse punch. After about three moves Sensei said “stop”. He then had us pair up with someone near our size and then, insert suspenseful music here, he had us massage each others shoulders and neck. It seems that many of us were tensed up and he wanted us to relax so that we could move better.

After about five minutes of massage, everyone was pretty relaxed and moving much closer to way Sensei felt we should. We did the normal group of combinations and my stances felt really good. I was moving fairly fast and my hip rotation felt great.

We then worked on something old but with a new twist. We did moving forward, front snap kick with front punch. The part that made this different is Sensei told us, instead of punching straight ahead after the kick, he told us to punch down instead. This made the move very different and made it much easier for me to hit with my shin and not just my hand. It really made the punch feel much more grounded and powerful.

We then spent a good amount of time working on moving forward front punch. Sensei wanted us to work on all five parts of the movement. We worked on this before and today he made a comment that was a little different, he said to concentrate on the elbow strike. This made the punch feel much different. He also has us focus on the other parts, guarded back leg, knee sweep, shin clash and the punch, one by one and then we put all of them together.

We finished up the class with some kata. We did Heian Shodan, Heian Nidan and Heian Godan.

After class, Sensei asked if there was something wrong since my kicks were off. He said that he noticed it right away and I wasn’t extending my kicks. Oddly enough, it felt that I was buckling at my abs when throwing my kicks and my Sensei saw it.

It was a really good class.

Just when I thought it was safe to return to the dojo, more stance training!

So, Tuesday class was tough and Friday class was even harder but today, Sensei had us do another 500 punches.

We started with a good warm up and then a long stretching session.  After that, we got right in to it.

Horse stances is where it all began.  We threw 100 punches and then got a short rest of 35 crunches.  We moved back in to the horse stances again and did another 100 punches and then were supposed to do 30 burpies.   I could not do the burpies because my abs cramped as soon as I bent down so I did 30 squats instead.  Next we moved in to a front stance and did 50 punches and then switched legs and did another 50.  After that, we did another two sets of 100 punches in a horse stance.

My stances were really low but my hips were on fire!

After that, we finished up with a kata.  I did my rank kata, Tekki Shodan, and even though my legs felt like they were going to buckle at any time, I was able to finish it.

Classes like these are really hard but they do feel good and there is no way to leave without feeling that you accomplished something.

I thought that Tuesday class was torture, it was almost nothing next to todays class!

The goal was to torture our legs and make us hold our stances for what seemed like forever.

We started in a horse stance and punched 100 times. Next came a front stance and 50 punches on each leg. Next came more horse stances and punches for another 100. Then came a bunch of side thrust kick. Sensei had us hold the wall with one hand and throw a low, medium and high side thrust kick for at least 50 each leg. My hips actually started to cramp after the 20 plus kicks. After that, back in to the horse stance and 100 more punches.

My legs and shoulders were so tired that I could hardly pick my leg up or throw a punch with any power near the end of class. My mind was still trying but my body was not at that point.

We also did at least three or four sets of 30 crunches and a bunch of push ups. Doing the sit ups and push ups was a nice rest before moving on to the next set of torture. My mind is a little blurry but I think there were some squats somewhere in there for good measure.

I almost forgot, we finished up with two kata. I did Tekki Shodan for both of them but I could hardly raise my legs when stepping in to each move.

Even though it was extremely hard, I feel that classes like those will help prepare us for our upcoming rank exams and tournament.