Sensei Cieplik has been sharing many new techniques with us lately.   The side snap kick with reverse punch and the standing upright punch near the end of the this post are both good examples.

Kicks and basics…

After our warm up, from a front stance, we did front leg shuffle up roundhouse kick then shuffle back in to a front stance.  Next we did shuffle up roundhouse kick with front leg, shuffle back, rear leg roundhouse kick, shuffle back so the rear kicking leg become the front leg, then repeat.

Sensei had us slow things down because at least half of the class was doing cutting kicks instead of roundhouse kicks.  We did some slow roundhouse kicks starting with the knee of the kicking leg pointing to the side, then pivot to the front and point the knee forward, kick, pivot back so our knee is facing the side again and set the kicking leg back down behind.

For our final kicking drill, we did side snap kick to the front, then step down and reverse punch.  This was a different drill that I don’t recall doing in the past.

Next, we did moving forward and back with downward block, inward block, outward block, then rising block and reverse punch.

Hold your energy back….

For the next drill we did moving forward and backward in a back stance.   Sensei uses and example where a student is standing in a back stance and he is behind them, trying to get around them.  The back stance is holding the energy back and then when the time is right, it goes forward and POW.  For example, someone throws a punch at you, you move into a back stance with a knife hand block with you weight on your back leg.  From there, you spring forward in to a front stance and throw a front punch.

For the next drill we stood upright and punched.  With our knees a little soggy, we tightened our butts and abdominal muscles and punched.  The idea is to create punching power by having connection between the upper and lower body though the core muscles.

We finished up class doing Heain 1 through 4 and some bunaki for each kata.

Since I enjoy kata so much, today was a really enjoyable class for me.  Sensei Noia had us work on kata for almost the entire class and added a couple of twists to our training.

First half of one kata, then second half of four more…

We started doing Heian Shodan once.  After that, we did Heian Shodan again up to the first kiai.  From there we started from the first kiai in Heian Nidan, then from the first kiai in Hiean Sandan, then Heian Yondan and Heian Godan.

After our kata warm up, we worked on some kihon.  I like to think of these types of basic combination’s as ten-no-kata.

We started moving forward in a left leg forward front stance with a front punch, then stand up with a straight punch and then step back in to a right leg forward front stance and front punch again.  We did the same drill as above but this time, when we stood up between front stances, we did a double punch.

Assisted kihon and kata….

We partnered up and did moving forward with various block and strikes but after each move our partner would check to see if we were doing them correctly.  Our partner checked if our draw hand was tight against our side, if our back leg was straight or bent depending if we were punching or blocking.  They would push on our shoulders to see if we had connection between our upper and lower body or push on our arm to see if we were using our upper back (latissimus) muscles when doing a rising block.  The best part about this type of drill is you can feel if your body is using the correct muscles or not.

For the next drill, we did our belt rank kata (Kanku Dai for my partner and me).  Kanku Dai is a very long kata to have each move checked and holding and squeezing all those muscles is a workout in itself.

We finished up class with two kata’s on our own trying to do them using the corrections and get the feeling that we had when our partner was correcting us.

This is one of my favorite type of class since we get immediate feedback on whether or not we are doing our moves correctly.

Sensei Brien told us that he was going to do things in class this session that are unconventional and that we haven’t done before.  Today we did just that by spending the entire class working on something that I do not remember doing in any class before.

Hit anywhere you want….

Sensei had us get a partner and told us that we could hit any part of our partners body.  This included kicks and strikes below the belt to the groin, knees, ankles and feet along with attacks to the neck and throat and some joint locks too.  The idea behind this drill is to prepare us to think about how we would react if someone attacks an area that is normally off limits during regular kumite drills.  This puts things in a different perspective.  Unlike one-step sparring, where we have done similar drills like this, we were moving around like when we do free sparring.  I have always mentioned to others, when talking about self defense theory, that the knees make a good target, especially when the attacker is larger than me.  I also like the throat and eyes as another good target.

I did this drill with six different partners and each one had a different attack that they favored.  One went for my eyes on almost every attack, another aimed for my knees and another tried to get me into joint locks every chance he had.

It was a new and good experience to work on areas that we normally do not work on and I am looking forward to doing it again.