If it looks good, slow it down!  

Sensei Cieplik shared a really interesting point with us tonight about making good things more visible by not rushing them.  The idea is, if you do something really well in your kata, hold each move in a group of moves longer to have others focus on it.  More to come….After the normal kicking warm up, we started with some kihon.  We did downward block, rising block and inward block all with reverse punch.  Then came a real hip opener, outward block and reverse inward block with jab and reverse punch.  The key to this move was open the hips for the outward block, close the hips for the inward block, open the hips again for the jab and finally close the hips for the reverse punch.  Of course, keeping the front knee from moving is an important requirement.

For the next drill, we needed a partner.  We started in a front stance facing each other.  One partner remained stationary and the other did what Sensei called an 8 point roundhouse kick.

1. Bring kicking up and point it to the 45 degrees to the back.
2. Pivot and point the knee to the front.
3. Kick around your partners arm.
4. Snap the kick back.
5. Pivot and bring the knee back to 45 degrees again.
6. Pivot and point the knee to the front.
7. Kick around your partners arm.
8. Snap the kick back, bring the leg back to the side and set it down, behind, in a front stance.

For the next drill, we hit the pads.  One partner held the pad and the other hook punched it.  For this to be effective, Sensei said to aim the arm, drop the body and hit.  For example, the punching arm is bent and the punching fist is aimed at the target, you use your upper back muscles to lock your arm in position and from there you drop your body and hit the pad.  This certainly is a good way to understand “with the body.”

For the next drill, we stood in a tall stance and threw a punch from the hip.  The idea is to let the punching arm and hand be very loose and have it act like a whip (rock on a rope) and then have the motion of the hip throw the punch.  The makes the power come from the lower body and not the chest and shoulders.

Give them a reason to pay attention to your movements….

Next came kata.  Sensei had the black belts go first .  We did Kanku Dai while he watched us and then said, when you get the four knife hand blocks in a back stance movements, do not rush through those four moves.  Pause for at least one second between each of those moves to show everyone how good your back stance looks.  We did Kandu Dai twice and then moved on to Join.

Today, Sensei Cieplik had us do our normal warm up which includes many kicks and as we were kicking, he saw something that many of us were doing that needed to be fixed.

We must fix this…..

We started with front snap kick to the front 20 times each leg.  Right after that, we got a partner.  One partner holds one hand out in front of the other, just above belt height, and the other partner brings their knee up to their hand, three times and on the third time, we front snap kick.  We did this drill 20 times with each leg.

For the next drill, we stood in front of our partner with one hand on their shoulder.  We then held one knee up as high as we could and then, while holding it up, we kicked above their belt 40 times with each leg.

The next drill is either a great kicking drill or a good bicep builder.  For this drill, you bring your leg up to the front, put one hand on your partners shoulder, then hook your arm your leg that you are holding up and bring it out to the side for a slow side thrust kick while keeping your arm hooked around it.  I should have arms like Arnold Schwarzenegger after doing this drill.

We couldn’t leave out the roundhouse kicks.  For this drill, we stood face to face with our partner, brought our back leg up to the side for a roundhouse, pivoted, then kick slowly at our partner and have them turn our kicking leg hip over at the end and point our foot down.

The next drill was a sparring drill.  From a fighting stance, one partner stepped in an punched, the other partner blocked and reverse punched, to other partner tapped the inside of the first partners calf and counter with a reverse punch.

Help the lower ranks with their kata….

Sensei paired each of the black belts up with a lower belt and had us give them help with their kata.

One of the most important parts of Karate is helping others so that they can carry on your art.  Hopefully, one day, the person that I helped will be able to pass on what they have learned to someone else.

Today, Sensei Noia had us spend most of the class working on our hip movements.

To warm up, we started in a front stance doing stationary blocks with reverse punch making sure to pay attention to hip movement.  Next, we moved forward and back with outward block and reverse punch.

The following drills were real hips openers:

Moving forward and back in a front stance with inward block and the hips open, then close the hips without moving and do an outward block to open the hips again and then reverse punch with the hips closed like normal.  Moving forward with an inward block and reverse outward block, then move forward again with an outward block and a reverse outward block.

This drill almost had me on the floor.  We started in a back stance with knife hand block, then spin around 180 degree behind with knife hand block again and repeat.  The spinning motion really tests the balance.

Time to kick….

Sensei has us do timed squats.  From a horse stance, we did a squat and then a left leg side thrust kick, back to horse stance, squat and right leg side thrust kick, alternating legs for 60 seconds.

The next drill was a timed standing back kick.  We did each kick but with a pause for a second at the end of the kick.  Sensei wanted us to kick like it would break someone leg if you hit them.

Mirror image kata….

We started with Jion but mirror image.  Doing kata like this is always a challenge but luckily for us, Jion is all basics.

Next, we did kata in groups where the brown belts did squats and we did kata, then all the black belts did kata and the others did squats.  This doesn’t s0und like anything hard but brown and black belt katas are pretty long and I did somewhere near 60 squats.  I do think the brown belts had the worst of it because Kanku Dai is a really long kata.

Next, Sensei had us pick a kata and do it up to the kiai 5 times in a row.  We then finished up by doing the same kata twice but starting the second kata as soon as we finished the first one.

This was a really enjoyable class.  I like working on kata and basics around test time, even though I am not testing.  I feel that my Karate always goes up a notch whenever testing time comes around.