Sensei Brien said some times you need to do your karate a different way if you want to grow.  Even after you have been training for a long time and your moves become automatic, you should still have to think if you want to continue to improve.

Do what from a back stance….

Sensei said that we were going to do something out of the box and we did.  We started in a back stance moving forward and backward doing:

• Rising block
• Rising block with reverse punch
• Downward block with reverse punch
• Inward block with reverse punch
• Front punch
• Triple punch

We followed those moves up with moving forward and backward in a front stance doing knife hand blocks.

Mirror image kata….

We spent the rest of the class working on kata with a twist.  We did our kata in mirror image.  We started with Heian Shodan and went all the way to Heian Godan.  We also did Heian Shodan the regular way and then did it again but we added a reverse punch after each block.  We then did it mirror image with the added the reverse punch.  We then did it again and added a rear leg front snap kick after every front punch.  We then replaced all the front punches with triple punches.

Sensei said that the idea behind all of these changes is you cannot stay comfortable and grow.   You need to work the weak side so that you do not have a week side.  If you don’t have a weak side you will be very dangerous.

This is something that I am certainly going to add to my training outside of my Karate classes.

Sensei Cieplik has been working on some very specific drills with us over the last few weeks and today was very interesting on how power should go in to the target that you are striking.

Triple punch with kicks….

After our warm up, Sensei had us spend a good amount of time working on our triple punch.  For that drill that we did front leg front snap kick, rear leg front snap kick, come down and triple punch.  If you end in a long stance after doing the triple punch, it is very hard to throw a good front snap kick for the next repetition.  Bringing that front leg up requires a lot of core strength.

The next drill was a hip opener.   From a high front stance we did a roundhouse kick leaving the stationary front foot pointing forward,  turning the  hip of the kicking leg over and pointing the toes to floor then setting the kicking leg back down behind.  The idea is to get a whipping motion as the hip comes around.

We finished up our kihon drills with moving forward rising block, then inward block, then outward block, then downward block and then knife hand block.  We did all of these blocks on each count and the key of this drill was use two hands when doing the blocks.

Power goes in……

We partnered up to work on the concept of power going in to the body.  When you hit someone in the stomach and they tighten up, you aren’t going to hurt them too much.  But if you hit them, while their stomach is loosened, it will do some serious damage.  One of the ways to do this it to hit the same area twice in a row.  When doing triple punch, you hit the face or throat with the first punch, then you hit the stomach with two punches in the exact same place.  The first punch makes the muscles release and the second punch goes into the body and possibly the organs.  When throwing this type of punch, it is easier to use a vertical fist and squeeze the last three fingers first and then the index finger and thumb.

We also did a moving target drill.  For this drill, one partner shifted side to side and we tried to hit them between the time when they started and stopped moving.

Finish up with kata….

We did Heian Shodan through Heian Sandan with no stops.  We then did Heian Shodan again but with the mind of punching in and down as we punched.  We then did Heian Sandan two more times and Heian Godan.

I need to explore the idea of power goes in much more.  I like to think that I can tighten my stomach up really hard but hitting the same spot really loosened it up enough to where I could feel the second punch going in to the same place, even if the punches were thrown lightly.