Class tonight started with one of the tougher warm ups that we have had in a while.  Sensei Noia had us get a partner, one of us stood in the middle of the gym in a side thrust kick while the other ran to the end of the gym and back.  Our partner ran back and forth 10 times and then did a full kata at the far end before we could put our foot down.  We then did the other leg and it was our partners turn.

Kata bunkai…

I was tired out after the warm up.  For the rest of the class, we worked on bunkai from Heian Godan and Jion.

While working on Jion, we did the dropping block movement.  Our partner held a focus mitt about lower chest level and we reached up and did the dropping block with the forearm strike.  This felt like very powerful movement.  The dropping body weight and the twist of the wrist and forearm at the end was the key to getting the power.

We also worked on the kage zuki (hook punch).  Sensei had us work on getting the snap at  the end of the movement and not so much on hip rotation to generate our power.  This is a small movement so the snap and twist of the hand make the move effective.

We finished up with a couple of Heian Godan movements.   We spent a good amount of time working on the  outward block and upper cut punch.  When doing these moves in the kata on the air, you never really get the feel what striking something is like.  Our partner held one pad at about check level and the other over head level.   After a few tries and getting our aim correct, Sensei had us do the jump that follows those two moves.   We did this movement with the jump at least 10 times.

Finish with some kata…

After doing the bunkai from Jion on Heian Godan, Sensei had us do those two katas and think about the movements that we just worked on as if we were still striking our pads.  It did feel different and more realistic than before.

If you have the chance to work on your kata movements like this, I highly suggest you do.  Knowing how and where to strike or block really makes the kata feel much more realistic.

This was a really helpful class.  Sensei Cieplik shared some things with us that I never really understood until now.

Close your eyes…

After our warm up, Sensei had us work on some extra kicking drills.  We did front snap kick, back kick and roundhouse kick.  The new twist was to do those movements with our eyes closed.  When our eyes are open, we could can see our balance because we were able to see the floor (horizon) in front of us.  Once our eyes were shut, we had us us our other senses to keep our balance when throwing our kicks.  This combination of kicks is one that we have been doing for ages but closing our eyes took it to different place.  Out of the eight to ten times that we did it, I had my balance twice.  It was certainly one of the harder drills that we have worked on in class.  One of the hardest pasts we making sure tha we were facing the correct direction when we did each kick.

Find your target and focus on that point…

This is something that we have worked on before but not as intensely as we did today.  When we were doing our kata, Sensei had us focus on seeing a specific target when doing each movement.  For example, when doing the moves in Heian Shodan, we turn our eyes in the direction of the attacker, then our head turns and we are to focus on a specific point.  I have done this before but I never really thought about the focus part until he told us to concentrate on it.  This made the kata fell really different and more intense.

We spent some time using the same concept in Jion.  The focus in Jion felt eaiser since the kata is almost entirely made up of basic movements and the foucs on specific points is almost natural.

The main point that took away from this is not only to imagine an attacker when doing our kata but also focus on a specific point on our imaginary attacker.