Sensei Brien gave us a taste of explosive kata in class today.

Explode then freeze….

This was an awesome class and spent close to 90 minutes working on this one concept.  The idea here was to do a movement with 100% speed and power, then stop and hold, then repeat.

For example, when doing Heian Shodan, we started from a ready stnace, then moved as fast and strong as possible into the front stance with downward block and then froze like a statue.  Then we moved into the front stance with front punch and did the same.  We did these drills with Heian Shodan, Heian Nidan, Heian Sandan, Heian Yondan and Jion.

This is an extremely hard way to train and even though we only did a couple hundred techniques, doing it all out for more than a few katas is almost impossible.

Give this a try in your own kata training and let me know what you think in the comment area.

For many years, Sensei Cieplik has been telling me “with the body” when doing our techniques and tonight was another example of how using the entire body can make the movements very strong.

Kihon….

After our warm up, we did some kihon.  We did rising block, inward block, and downward block all with reverse punch forward and backward.  We also did moving forward and backward with knife hand block.

Next, from a stationary front stance, we did jab, front leg front snap kick, then stepped back and a reverse punch.  After the front snap kick, Sensei told us to drop down and then move back in to the front snap and throw the reverse punch.  Dropping down helps us get our balance and drive the punch from the legs and hips.

The next drill, from a stationary front stance, was front snap kick, side thrust kick, back kick, roundhouse to the front kick, front snap kick to the front and hook kick to the punch.

By yourself, then with a partner….

For the next drill, we started started in a front stance with our hips forward and our reverse hand out, from there, we did a back fist opening the hips then we closed our hips and reverse punched.  The hip twisting action made this a very powerful movement.  We did the same drill with a partner holding a pad.  For example, we did the back fist to their head and then the reverse punch to the pad.

Another drill that Sensei had us work on had us stand in front of our partner with our fist in front and our elbow close to our hip, from there, we tightened our fist, pushed our hips forward and hit the pad that our partner was holding.  This was a very small movement but driving from the hips and legs made my partner move back and pop both of his feet off the floor.

We finished up class with some kata and did Kanku Dai twice.

Today was a very special day…

40 years ago today, Sensei Cieplik stepped in to the dojo for the very first time.  It’s an honor for me to be able to learn from someone with so many years experience and I am grateful that he continues to share his knowledge with us in every class.

Today, Sensei Noia worked our minds more than our bodies.

Leave your ego at the door…..

After our warm up, we partnered up and did slow motion kumite.  The idea of this drill is to move slow enough to give each person time to think before blocking or attacking and also keep moving continuously.  This gives each of us time to see which attacks and blocks are effective or not without having to react in a split second like when doing normal sparring drills.  The only problem with this drill is that you have a tendency to move faster and faster as you go along.  We switched partners every minute or two and ended up working with 25 different people during that class.

Wrist to wrist….

For the last few minutes of class, we picked a partner, stood in front of them and put our wrist lightly against theirs.  The idea of the drill is to read your partners attack before they actually attack.  Once they move to attack, you feel them pull away from your wrist and block.  The idea is to hit your partner and never get hit.

We did the same drill with both wrists touching.  It is harder with both wrists touching, at least for me, because I had a tendency to focus on the first move that partner made and ended up getting hit with the other hand.  These type of drills really help improve reaction time.