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This is a log of my journey to Shotokan Karate Shodan and beyond.

Six years of Karate – 6/22/10 – Tuesday Karate class

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Sensei Noia was filling in for another instructor at a different Dojo today and Sensei Plocharczyk and Sensei Gomez filled in and gave us an excellent Karate class.

It was six years ago today that my wife and I started taking Karate with Sensei Noia.  It’s been a lot of fun and hopefully their will be many more years like these ahead of us.

Horse stance and twist….

We started out in a horse stance, then turned to the left and threw a reverse punch and then we pivoted to the right and threw a reverse punch.  Next, we did the same thing but with two punches for one count.

Again, from a horse stance we did a front snap kick with one leg and then the other.  Next, we did two front snap kicks for every one count.

Get a partner and hit them….

For the next drill, we got a partner and a couple of pads.  We both started in a horse stance and threw a front punch.  Next came double front punch.  After that, we stood in a front stance, and did a rear leg front snap kick.  The first five kicks were slow and soft and the next five were full power and full speed.  We then switched our stance and kicked with the other leg.

After the kicks came reverse punches.  Again we did five slow and five strong and fast with both legs in front.  Next, we did shuffle up with front leg side thrust kick.

For the last drill, one partner stood about 10 feet away from the other and walked forward.  As the walking partner got the correct distance away the other partner was able to attack with one of the four techniques that we used above.  This is more a timing drill than power drill but when executed correctly, it stops the walking partner in their tracks.

We finished up doing our belt kata, one at medium speed and another kata at full speed up to the first kiai and then slow motion for the rest of the kata.  I really need to spend some quality time with Kanku Dai because remembering all 64 of those moves is proving to be harder than I thought.

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Kick, tap and kick – 6/19/10 – Saturday Karate class

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I did a make up class with Sensei Plocharczyk today and it was a lot of fun.

A couple moves from Sensei Cieplik’s book…

We did the same drill that we do with Sensei Cieplik where we start in a front stance with our reverse punch out.  From there, we reach with our back hand, do a front snap kick, step down with the kicking leg behind and do a reverse punch.  This is Sensei Cieplik’s version of jumping jacks.  It took me at least a few months to coordinate myself to this drill and I still make mistakes after close to four years of doing it each week.

After, that we did our own belt kata.  I got about half way though Kanku Dai and forgot what to do next.

Get a partner….

Sensei had us work on some kicking combination drills.  We started with a front snap, dropped the foot the floor and then a roundhouse kick.  Next, we did a similar drill where we did a roundhouse kick and then a side thrust kick.  Then came a front snap kick fake followed up with a roundhouse kick.  Next came fake roundhouse kick with side thrust kick.  The idea behind the fakes was to make it look like a particular kick was coming and then another kick is thrown.

Partner sparring…

We got a partner and did some different drill with the moves that we worked on above.  Then we sparred where we could only use a reverse punch to score on our partner.  Next, one partner could use reverse punch and other could only score with a kick.

We finished up class with some conditioning.  We did V-ups but upper body down and our legs up, then lower body down and our upper body up and then full v-ups with our body starting flat on our backs.  Next, we did one leg and the opposite arm up, alternating legs and arms.

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New session, more Karate to learn – 6/17/10 – Thursday Karate class

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Today was the start of the new Karate session and it was great to see a lot of the same faces and many new faces too.

Warm up….

Sensei Cieplik had us start with our normal warm up.  We did 10 stationary front snap kicks with our hands down by our sides.  Next came five front snap kicks and back kick combination.  Then we did front snap kick and side thrust kick.   Then came front snap kick, back kick, roundhouse kick and front snap kick.

We finished our warm up with a drill that Sensei has us do that it equivalent to jumping jacks.  We start in a front stance with our reverse hand out in front, we then reach with the opposite hand, throw a front snap kick and then step back and throw a reverse punch.  The idea here is for the entire class to do this drill in unison.

Kicks, punches and blocks and a kata….

We started with stationary knee strike with front snap kick.  Next comes moving forward with knee strike and front snap kick.  The key is to make it two separate movements.  The knee strike pushes the hip forward, then the hip retracts, the knee comes back up and the front snap kick is executed.

Next, we worked on moving forward with front snap kick and front punch.  We also worked on moving forward with just front punch but Sensei had us pay extra attention to all five parts of the movement.  And we all thought that moving forward with a front punch is simple.  Sensei has gone over this many times before but I feel that repeating this again is a good refresher that won’t hurt.

The five parts of the front punch are as follows;

  1. Shin clash – Hit them with your front leg shin and scare them with your legs.  Hitting them with the shin takes their mind off of your hands for a split second.
  2. Knee sweep – As the front knee knee moves it, it will twist and sweep their leg if done correctly.
  3. Guarded rear leg – The rear leg needs to be planted and solid.  A person the of the same weight should be able to stand on your back leg when you are in a front stance with your hips straight ahead.
  4. Draw hand – The draw hand or pull hand allows your to pull your attacker in toward you.
  5. The punch – The easiest part of the movement, just make sure that you hit with the correct knuckles, first two knuckles next to the thumb.  One other point that Sensei often makes about a punch is to think or focus on a spot behind your target instead of just stopping the punch at the target.

For our next drills, we working on moving forward and back doing downward block, rising block and inward block.  Sensei had us focus on our inward block and when moving forward and back, we need to keep our chins back.  Don’t squeeze or make the block small by bringing the blocking arm close to the body, instead, let the legs and hips do the block and just use the arm as an extension of the body.

Next, we worked on moving forward and back with inward block, elbow strike and backfist.  The idea here again was to make sure that stances are what they should be.  The front stance needs to look like a front stance and the horse stance needs to look like a horse stance, no kind of stances.

The next drill was back stance with knife hand block.  Then, knife hand block, front snap kick and spear hand.  Each move needs to increase with intensity.  The knife hand block is strong, the front snap kick is stronger and the spear hand is strongest.

For the next drill, we started in a horse stance, stepped across and did a side thrust kick.  The next drill was the same but with side snap kick and the last drill was one step with both kicks.  The key to this drill was to pay extra attention to the cross leg stance with our toes touching when stepping across.

We did one Heian Shodan after the basics.

Get a partner, block and jab….

With our partner, we did a drill where one of us throws a jab and reverse punch and the other partner, blocks the jab with the front hand, blocks the reverse punch with the back or bottom hand and then throws a jab right from the blocking position.  One key to this drill is to keep the elbow of the front jabbing hand facing downward.  If the elbow goes out the side, it makes the punch slower and less powerful.

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