Sensei DiPasquale was out of town for the upcoming US Open Karate tournament and Sensei Bajic ran the class today.

Warm up those legs…

We started with a horse stance with front punch, then double punch.  Next came horse stance into front stance to the left with reverse punch then  twist to right with reverse punch.   After that, horse stance to front stance with reverse punch and then front snap kick, step back, twist to right and repeat then back to horse stance.   The last warm up was horse stance to left front stance with front snap kick, step back into back stance with knife hand block then back to horse stance with punch.  It was hard to wrap my brain around some of these combination’s but after a couple, it felt fairly fluid.

Breath in when you do your kata…

Sensei had us work on something I don’t recall working on before.  He had us foucs on taking a breath in before doing the moves in the kata.  Breath in to prepare and then breath out when we do the movement.  He had us work on all of the Heian katas along with Jion, Bassai Dai and Kanku Dai with the foucs.  The little extra focus on that part really made the kata feel much more powerful when doing it slowly.  I am not sure how well I do this when doing the kata at normal speed but I am going to try it out.

It was a very hard class but very good too.

Sensei Noia had exam preparation on his mind today.

We spent a good amount of time on our warm up.  We started by jogging back and forth across the dojo.  Next came low walks, sideways shuffle, low walks with a twist and moving forward kick to our hands to stretch out our hips.

Stances, get them right…

• Sensei had us move forward and back with our hips straight ahead like a punch.  Next we turned our hips 45 degrees to the side like when blocking.

• We then did back stances forward and back without using our hands.

• Next came horse stance moving sideways.

• Next was back stance into front stance like in Heian Nidan.

Time for combination’s…

We spent a good amount of time doing rising block, inward block, outward block  and downward block with reverse punch both forward and back.

Next, we moved into a front stance, then from there we squeezed our legs together and then moved into back stance.  For example, we started with left leg forward front stance, we squeezed our legs together and then put our right leg out into a back stance.  The moved formed a square.   We then repeated with the right leg forward first.

We finished up with Heian Shodan but after each movement, we moved from a front stance into back stance between each move.  This added a new dimension to the kata and it really works the legs hard.

It was a great class and I am looking forward to more like it.

Since testing is coming up soon, Sensei Plocharczyk had us work on our kihon.

Lots of kihon…

Sensei had us work on the normal combination’s such as the varous block and reverse punches.

We then spent some time working on double blocks.  For example, we did an outward block and a reverse outward block.  Inward block, jab and reverse punch.  We spent a lot of time trying to work on the details that we often forget.

We finished up with some kata.

I am glad that testing time is coming around since I really like classes like these.