One each of Heian Shodan, Heian Nidan, Heian Sandan and Heian Yondan, Heian Godan and Tekki Shodan. (6 total)

One each of Heian Shodan and Heian Godan.

Good class again on Saturday.

We did mostly a repeat of Friday’s class. Lots of basics and kata.

One thing that really helped was something my Sensei said about doing kata. He made the point that many of us really slow down by trying to show that our moves are powerful. Instead of trying to force the power, he said to just relax everything and go through the moves as fast as possible. I have always powered my way though my moves and when I just relaxed my muscles, my moves were much more fluid and much easier to execute. I am going to add some high speed kata’s like those to my current kata training and see what happens.

One each of Heian Shodan, Heian Nidan, Heian Sandan and Heian Yondan, Heian Godan and Tekki Shodan. (6 total)

Good class.

We made up the class we missed on Tuesday today.

We worked on kihon and kata for our upcoming rank test.  We worked on a lot of hip rotation.  One move that I need to work on outside of class that was really good for opening up my hips, is where we start in a front stance with reverse punch and then pivot into a horse stance with the feet pointing out far to the corners (Shiko Dachi) and do a downward block.  It really makes the hips open up.

We then worked on back stance, knife hand block and  front stance Nukite.  Moving into the back stance after being in the front is a little hard me since I am jumping instead of just moving my front leg.

Next we worked on kicks.  Slow motion front snap kicks, then slow motion front snap kick with side thrust kick and hold then the same moves but full speed while still holding the side thrust kick at the end.

We then worked on a part of our kata.  Each different group had a specific move.  The 5th Kyu had to do the double block into groin strike then block from Heian Godan.  I need to keep the front foot on the ground and not pick it up when going from the front stance into the back stance.

My hips are very sore, even while I am just sitting here typing this out.