I had to take the last week off from classes because of a nasty cold but today was my first day back at it and it felt pretty good.

Have I mentioned how much I like working on Kihon before?  I am sure that I have and tonight was exceptionally likable.

Kihon…

Sensei Cieplik had us work on a lot of kihon drills today.  We spent some time working on the standard drills such as moving forward and back with front punch, the various block and punch combination moving forward and back along with moving forward front snap kick with front punch.

Sensei seemed to be paying extra attention to the moving forward and back with front punch.  I believe that he was looking for connection.  By connection I mean, connection to the floor, using the correct muscles of the legs, core and upper back.  When I have connection and I am doing this simple movement correctly, it is one of my favorites.  It just feel good.

Advanced kihon…

Sensei gave a more advanced drill to the 1st kyu and black belts.  He did say that the 2nd kyu’s and below could try it so I did.  This move felt really natural to me even though it is supposed to be more complex.  He had us do moving forward and backward reverse punch, with rising block and reverse punch.  There is a good amount of hip movement in this drill and it felt that a lot of power was generated on each move.

Point with the back hand…

I felt that this deserved it’s own heading.  Sensei had us work on back stance with knife hand block, front snap kick and nukite.  We have often done this movement in the past but Sensei said one thing today that made it totally different to me.  He noticed that when some of us were kicking or doing the nukite, we were pulling back on the draw hand and showing our intention.  He said to “point with the back hand.”  He meant for us to point at our opponent with the finger of the draw hand while we were kicking.  By doing that, it make the nukite come without pulling it back first.  Just thinking about it totally changed (improved) the execution for me.

Kata…

Sensei had us spend a lot of time working on kata.  We did at least 10 or more kata’s starting with heian Shodan.  Again, Sensei was looking for connection.  We also did heian Nidan, Heian Sandan, Heian Yondan, Jion and Bassai Dai.  I liked to think that I am pretty good shape but after doing all of those kata’s I could hardly breath.  I think Jion took the most out of me but I might have been trying too hard by tensing too many muscles that I didn’t need to tense.

This was an excellent class and I am glad that I felt well enough to take it.

Sensei Plocharczyk had us work on some contact drills.

Hit the pad…

I have always felt that we do not hit thing enough and Sensei Plocharczyk felt the same way today.  We spent the entire class hitting pads with a partner.

We started with simple drills like reverse punch.  Next we worked on using the outside edge of our hand to strike the pad.  After that came hammer fist and we finished up with elbow strikes.

All of these movements are extremely powerful and when the hips are behind the moves, they feel deadly.

It was an excellent class and I hope we have more like these in the future.

Sensei Plocharczyk gave us a good kicking class today.

Hit the pad not your partner…

We started out with a drill where our partner hold a focus mitt and we do a front leg roundhouse kick.  Next came from leg roundhouse followed with a rear leg roundhouse.  The next drill was front leg hook kick and rear leg hook kick, which was much harder than the other two drills.

Conditioning drills…

Sensei had us work on some conditioning drills.  For one drill, Sensei had us put or focus mitt under our chest and do pushups.  Next came a drills where one partner did a pushup on the focus mitt, then picked it up with one hand and passed it across to the other partner and he or she did a push up.  We did 20 each of those.

After that came some partial pushups.  We started with a hold in the top position, next in the middle position and the next our chest was about two inches off the ground.  We held each postion for 15 to 30 seconds.

The final movement was, lay on our back, bend one leg and keep the other straight, put the foot of the bent foot in our partners hand and hold up our body with the strength of that leg and just our shoulders in the ground.  It was all core work and a really good exercise.