Class started with a warm up that consisted of shifting and throwing light reverse punches at our partner to get the blood flowing and to prepare us for what was to come next…..

We did a lot sparring drills. I guess a lot is an understatement.

We started out, shifting in and out, with our partner while one of us blocked and the other attacked. First, it was light reverse punches much like our warm up, although my wife ended up moving in and running right in to a pretty hard reverse punch from me. I always pull my punches but with me shifting in and her shifting out, it was a solid hard punch.

Next, we kept shifting but instead of using punches as our attacks, we were able to use kicks. We could use roundhouse and hook kicks to the body and head. For some odd reason, my hook kick was better than usual. I have not had much success with hook kicks in the past but they were working pretty well. My right leg roundhouse was working well too, at least with my right leg. Both shuffle up front leg roundhouse and back leg was hitting pretty accurate.

We worked on some free sparring drills but could only use single moves and no combinations. The main theme of the class was moving in to attack and getting out so that our partner could not counter attack. I have always had problems retreating after I attack but I am starting to move to the side, or at least am trying to move to the side to get out of way. Moving sideways is working better but I still do not do it automatically.

We then did a drill where one of us put our front foot on a line on the floor and our partner would attack and we had to block without moving off the line. We did this drill non stop for 30 seconds with the attacker throwing as many punches and kicks as possible.

For fun, I guess it’s fun for some, we did burpees for 30 seconds while one group free sparred. I have done those before so they weren’t too hard but after close to and hour of shifting and sparring, I was starting to get tired after 20 seconds or so. I also worked my legs at the gym earlier that day so my quadriceps were tired already.

I almost forgot, we did a lot of partner sit ups. At one point, our Sensei wanted us to 50 but I could only get to 20 or so since my abdominals cramped up. Doing roman chair sit ups earlier at the gym, my abs were spent.

Overall, class was great and I think that my sparring skills are starting to improve at least a little.

I only took one class on Friday night because my legs are still very sore from my weight workouts.

We spent the entire class working on sparring drills. We started taking our partner across the gym while shifting. The idea was to keep up with each other and to make sure that we stayed at the proper distance apart. Then we did the same thing but with punches. One person would shift backward at a steady speed and the other would attack with punches. Next was much like that previous drill but we were able to use kicks. That made it a bit different because we had to adjust the distance now that we were kicking.

After many drills and what seemed like a lot of pushups were go to do some free sparring. Then we finished up with some self defense drills using a knife hand block and strike. We would block a punch with one hand, switch and grab the punching hand and strike to the neck with the knife hand. It was challenging to get the coordination right but near the end, I was able to do it.

The only downside to Friday class is that my feet get torn up on the dirty wood floor in the gym that we train in. Hopefully the park district will get their act together and start taking better care of the place.

Good class again.

We spent a great deal of time working on our back stance with knife hand block moves.  We would move in to a back stance with knife hand block but on an angle toward the corner behind us and then move forward into a back stance knife hand block.  We did a lot of drills with those moves then we started adding more moves like a front stance with front punch.

We also did a lot of pushups and crunches between many of the drills.

We ended with kata.  I am having some issues remembering Tekki Shodan for some reason.  I had done so many of them in the past, for some odd reason, I am forgetting the order the moves.  I guess it’s time for me to start daily kata work again.