Shotokanplanet.org

This is a log of my journey to Shotokan Karate Shodan and beyond.

Shift, shift, boom – 1/24/08 – Saturday Karate class

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Sensei Plocharczyk gave us some old standard sparring drills and a couple drills that I have never done before.

Timing is everything…

We started out with some simple sparring drills.  The first drill was shift in and try to reverse punch our partner while they block.  The next drill was shift in and attack and our partner could block and counter at the same time.  What I mean by the same time is the block and counter happen almost instantaneous.  For some reason, my timing was better today day than when I have done this drill in the past.

Tap sweeps…

Sensei had us work on our sweeping techniques.  i do not recall ever doing these drills before.  The first drill had us us and our partner holding our shoulders facing each other.  The partner going forward would hook the front foot of the other person at the moment that the shifted backward.  Getting the timing right on this drill was not easy for me but I started to get the hang of it after many tries.

The next drill was similar but this time, we would stand sideways and our partner would face us and pull out front leg forward as they shifted backward.  This was a little painful for me since my flexibility is not the greatest but I got through that drill without much damage.

For our next drill, it was time to see what we learned.  The idea was to face our partner, while holding their shoulders again and we would try to sweep and take down our parnters.  The idea was not to use our strength, instead we needed to use of sweep and our hip postition.  It’s easy to muscle a partner down to the floor if they are not as strong but doing it on pure technique, is much harder.

Excellent class is all I can say – 1/22/09 – Thursday Karate class

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Sensei Cieplik had us start with a lot kicks for our warm up.  It is normally cold in the dojo so the extra kicks do help getting our body temperature up.  He often gives us some interesting combination’s and today’s special group was front snap kick, back kick, roundhouse kick, hook kick and front snap kick.

Next came a few more kicks with front leg front snap kick with rear leg front snap kick.  The next move was front leg front snap kick and then put that leg behind and do a rear leg front kick.  That was a real brain twister.  After that came knee strike followed with front snap kick.  That move sounds easy but the idea is the do the knee strike, pull the hips back and then do the front snap kick.  It’s actually two moves not one.

Now that we are warm…

This was one of the neatest drills that I have done.  We started in a high front stance, then threw a front hand jab, then a reverse punch, then a front snap kick and from that position, keep the knee up from the kicking leg, squeeze the elbow of the opposite arm to that knee, tense the core and turn 180 degrees on the ball of the support foot block and then finish with a reverse punch.

Next, we spent on time working on our back stances with knife hand block, front snap kick and nukite.

Kata…

We started with Jion.  Sensei had us work on the transition from the high and low double block into the horse stance with hook punch.  Instead of shifting when doing that move, Sensei said to pivot on heal of the front leg from the back stance into the horse stance.  The idea is to pivot, drop down and then settle (lock the core) into the stance.

We spent the rest of the class working the Heian katas.

Kata time – 1/20/09 – Tuesday Karate class

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I ended up taking the earlier class today and spent the entire time working on kata with Sensei Plocharczyk.

Hard warm up…

We started with a hard warm up.  We jogged back and forth across the dojo twice, then we did butt kickers across the dojo.  That was easy compared to what came next.  We started with 10 pushups and situps, then we did nine and nine of each, then eight and eight all the way down to one and one of each movement.  We ended up doing 55 of each movement in a short time.  I was pretty much spent after the warm up at that point.

Lots of kata…

Sensei then had us start with Heian Shodan as a warm up and then Jion.  Next came Heian Nidan and then Bassai Dai.  After that came Heian Sandan followed by Bassai Dai with no hands.  Next came Heian Yondan followed with Jion.  After that was Heian Godan followed with Bassai Dai.  Next was Tekki Shodan, Jion, Bassai Dai and another Bassai Dai.

We then did 25 lunges in place followed with one more Bassai Dai.

Very hard class but very good.