I did a quick warm up and a good amount of stretching, I moved into my ab workout.  I am just getting back into working abs so I am taking it easy.

15 – situps
10 – twisting situps to each side
15 – lying leg raises

After that, I did my kata:

10 – Tekki Shodan

I started out doing the first few kata slowly and then moved faster with each kata.

After having three classes this week with hundreds of reps, I felt that it’s time to do something similar at home.

Todays focus is kicks.

Front snap kick and back kick – 20 each leg (40 kicks total)
Front snap kick, side thrust kick and back kick – 20 each leg (60 kicks total)
Front snap kick – 50 each leg (100 Total)
Side thrust kick – 50 each leg (while holding on to the wall for balance) (100 total)
Roundhouse kick – 50 each leg ( while holding on to the wall for balance) (100 total)
Side snap kick – 25 each leg (while holding on to the wall) (50 total)
Lying side thrust kick – 25 each leg (50 total)

Between sets of kicks, I did crunches, lying knee raises to the side and straight up, lying butt kickers (you lay on the floor face down and  try to hit your butt with your heals).

After I finished the kicks, I spent time stretching my hips.  They really have improved and are loosening up more and more each day.

Some classes are really hard and some are just plain old torture.

I knew that class was going to be a tough one when we started class with horse stances.   We did just about every move, outward block, inward block, rising block, front punch, double front punch, and triple punch, all from a horse stance.  We did sets of 10 and no rest in between movements.  At one point, I think we did 120 moves without a break.  We also did, from a horse stance of course, front snap kick, come back down in to a horse stance and throw a front punch then switch legs and repeat.

Then we did, you guessed it, more horse stance work. Not only did we do even more movements, we had to hold the stances while being timed.  It was unreal and at one point, I had to close my eyes and try to put my mind in a different place because my legs were burning.  I do have to admit, since I have been seeing my chiropractor, I can hold my horse stances much lower and wider.

To finish up class, we worked on kata.  We started with a couple of Heian Shodan’s and then, Sensei had us do all of the kata in sequence starting with Heian Shodan all the way up to our current belt kata.  At that point, I was totally spent and I had a hard time even putting my shoes on but I am sure that the next time we do a class like that, it will be a little easier.