This was an excellent class.

Sensei Noia split us up into groups and took the brown belts to work on kata.  He had each of us do our kata slowly and watched to see if we were making mistakes.  I was leaning forward again on my rising block with reverse punch combinations in Jion.  After a few more katas, Sensei had each of us do a kata alone while we watched and corrected us along the way.

To keep me from leaning forward, he took a stick and put it against my back to keep my posture upright.  I was also pushing my head backward when starting Jion instead of keeping my posture upright.  He also made me get into a front stance where I had to open, while blocking and close, while punching, my hips.  I was not getting enough hip rotation and when I was doing it, my front knee was moving too much.

The key things I need to work on is pushing forward when I punch and block to keep my posture upright, rotating my hips when punching and blocking and locking my muscles and holding at the end of my movements.

It was an excellent class and one that gave me a lot to work on.

We spent a good amount of the class working on kihon.

We started in a horse stance, turned on our heals into a front stance and blocked with our front hand.  The move was called a tato shuto uchi if I recall correctly.  It uses the outside edge of the hand as a strike placed near between where the upper chest meets the front shoulder muscles.  When doing this movement the hips are open like a block or jab movement.  We did the same movement but added reverse punch and then we added a front snap kick before the reverse punch.

Next, we worked with moving forward and backward block and punch combinations.   Sensei Plocharczyk wanted us to work on basics that we do in our kata.   We did one new combination that I never saw before.  It was a front snap kick with a hammer fist.  It sounds awkward but the combination feels feels fairly natural.

We then finished up class working on kata.  I did Jion for Sensei Plocharczyk and I need to work on pushing my belt forward, especially in my horse stances.

It was an excellent class.

Sensei Noia had us work on some different sparring drills.  We started out with doing something that was similar to one-step and three step sparring combined.

We started moving forward with a jodan punch at our partner, they did a rising block and blocked.  Next we did a chudan punch and they blocked with an inward block.  After that, we did a gaedan punch and they blocked using a downward block.  We then switched.  We did the same drill a few times but then used different timing between attacks.

Next came the same movements but this time were able to counter after one of the blocks.  The idea was to block and counter very quickly before our partner could throw another attack.  It was hard for me to counter quickly because we were moving our feet so slowly.

We then did the same movements but this time we had to counter with something different than a reverse punch.  This could be a ridge hand, backfist, kick or anything else but a punch.  It was hard reprogram my mind to do something other than a punch but after a few times, I was able to do it.

Class finished up with some partner drills where we punch at our partner, they block, then they punch and we block with the same hand that we punched with.  It’s a good coordination drill but it can be hard too.

Great class.