Homework! I had to type my homework early here so that I don’t forget what Sensei gave us to work on each day.

Starting in a front stance, we do a rear leg front snap kick, hold after the kick, then  bend back leg, move in to cat stance while bending the front leg, “pet the mouse” or keep the weight on the back leg and lightly and gently reach forward with front foot, move in to front stance and throw a front punch while keeping the hips straight.

No that I have that written down, here is the lowdown on class.

We started off with our normal warm up doing many kicks and finally, I think my roundhouse kicks are starting to look like roundhouse kicks instead of just throwing my legs out in to thin air like not too long ago.

We spent most of the class working on stances.  Even though we did a lot of punches and blocks the real meat of the lesson was our foot work and attention to blocking the groin area with our legs.  Sensei made up pay extra attention to brining the knees together when moving both forward and back.

We spent a good amount of time working on our homework in class so that we would all understand what Sensei was looking for.

One the same note, we spent some time working on keeping the groin protected while turning from on direction to another.  When moving backward, we would turn our back foot the direction that we wanted to end up facing while bringing the front leg in to what was similar to a cat stance, bringing the knees together and then pushing the front leg out to move in to a front stance.

Oddly enough, I don’t recall any kicking drills except for the warm ups.

We ended up finishing class with some kata.  We did Heian Shodan but with a little twist, Sensei had us do the kata with the moves that we worked on in the drills.  When paying attention to protecting the groin area, it does slow the kata down a bit but it really made me focus on each move and my technique.  I also felt much more powerful for some reason and I assume it was related to the extra focus.

Sensei made a comment about kata and the way it is performed today.  His point was that it used to take almost twice as long to perform the kata as it does today.  He mentioned that competition kata is done very fast where as in the past, kata was done with a two count after each move that showed power and kime.  Instead of the blinding speed that many competitors have today between moves, after each move there a pause or pose as Sensei said.

Class was very good.

Good class!

We started with some punching drills. We paired up with a partner and did reverse punches to the pads. We then shifted to the right and hit a new partner, first with a right hand reverse punch and then a left hand reverse punch. Next, we did the same drill but with two punches. First we shifted in for a right hand reverse punch, then shift out and back in for a left hand reverse punch.

After that came the kicks! I was able to push my hips a little harder and they seem to be coming along nicely. We did partner drills with focus mitts. My partner would hold one pad low, about waist high and the other pad about chest to should height. We did a bunch of different kicks but the best was roundhouse low pad, high pad and then high pad, low pad. That gave me an idea on how my hips are progressing. We also did some hook kicks but I am going to have to practice those a lot more before I feel good about them.

Hopefully, my hips will continue to improve as time and visits to Dr. Pusateri go on….

Since I only took one class on Friday, I wanted to make it up on Saturday.

We spent most of the class working on sparring drills.  We started shifting in throwing reverse punches at our partner to get warmed up.  After that, we shifted in. threw a jodan reverse punch, shifted out and back in and threw a chudan reverse punch then moved to the right to punch at a different partner.

Next, Sensei had us get in to groups of three.  One partner would shift in and punch, one was a target and the other would try to hit the attacker with one of those soft pool pads if we didn’t shift out fast enough.  The drill did make us focus on getting out of the way after the attack but it was depending on good timing from the partner with the pool pad.

We finished up in a circle with the Sensei’s attacking us with the pool pads while we blocked.

Having my hips working better really helped me shift backwards faster than before.