Shotokanplanet.org

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

Friday Karate class – 2/22/08 – New kicking drills.

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This was one of the harder classes that I recall in some time.  This wasn’t so much mentally hard but it was physically hard.

Sensei Noia had all of us get a pad.  We put the pad on the floor, knelt down and then put our left knee on it.  From this position, we stood up and threw a front snap kick then put our same knee back down on the pad.  We did this 10 times on each side.  We then did a roundhouse kick from the same starting position.  We then moved the pad and did the same thing without it, being sure to put our knee down easily.  Putting my knee down easily was much easier said than done for me.

The next movement, again from the floor starting position was front snap kick, side thrust kick and back kick.  pad, bend back leg, stand and kick. both front and roundhouse.

During the class, we had some conditioning movements.  The first being clockwise pushups.  We started with a pushup at the 12 0’clock position and kept doing them, moving our upper body around in a circle, until we returned to the same 12 o’clock position that we started at.  We then did the same thing but this time counter clockwise.  We also did a drill where we lay on our stomachs and tried to kick our butts with our heels.  We ended up doing 50 reps each leg.  After that came a lying bicycle movement where we lay on our back, raise our upper and lower body off the flow and move our legs as if we are pedaling a bike.

We then finished things up with some partner drills.  Our partner would punch, we would block then punch and our partner would block with the same hand he or she punched with and then we would do the same.  It is a little tough to get coordinated with the movement at first but it gets better the more you do it.

Very hard but good.

Thursday Karate class – 2/21/08 – Squeeze your heels together and stillness.

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Again, class was filled with a lot of good information.

We did a lot of kihon with our normal kicks but then we did something a little different.  Sensei Cieplik had us get into a front stance and then throw a front snap kick, then pivot a half turn to the left and throw a reverse punch, then repeat for a total of four times.  We then did the same movements but in the opposite direction.  The object of this drill was for us to regain our balance after the kick and then throw the punch.

When doing our normal warm kicks, with front kick and front punch Sensei stressed the importance of kicking and punching to the middle.

Sensei had us work on moving sideways in a horse stance, normally we kick with this drill, but paying attention to our feet and he had us reach with the leading leg then settle into the stance in a salad bowl motion.  The salad bowl analogy is the way the body should be moving.  Sensei made a very important comment that really struck me about the horse stance.  He said to try and squeeze your heels together when in a horse stance.  Just doing this made my stance so much strong and I was able to get lower than in the past.  It just goes to show, even after close to four years of studying Karate, there is always something to learn.

We spent some time working on kata.  We did a couple each of Heian Shodan and Heian Nidan and three Tekki Shodan and one of each up to the first ki-ai of Jion and Bassai Dai.  Sensei asked how do you improve your kata if you cannot move any faster or stronger?  His point is that if you reach your limit for speed and power how can you still improve your kata.  His answer was very simple yet I certainly did not expect it.  He said that if you reach the limit on speed and power, you need to practice to be stiller.  The more still that you are means that your movements will look stronger and faster if you start, or I guess end also, from a motionless state.

Sensei has also made a comment that I might have mentioned before.  He says to make kata your own.  If you try too hard to look or move like someone else, your kata will never be yours.  This point really hit home.  I have always tried to make my kata look like others who are younger and much faster than me but I have never did a kata the way that I wanted too.  When I try to move too fast, the quality of my technique really falls off.  This doesn’t mean to do kata without the basic fundamentals but it means to do the kata within your ability and don’t worry about looking like someone else when doing it, look like yourself.

Tuesday Karate class – 2/19/08 – Kihon and kata.

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Today was my kind of class.

For some reason, I enjoy doing kihon more than anything else lately.  I like the idea of going back to basics and todays class did not disapoint.

Sensei Noia had us start with simple moving forward front punch.  He had a do the first ten moves forward going slow and then five or six more at full speed and power.  He then had us do the same movement, ten times backward and then another five or six at full speed and power.  We used the same repitition scheme for rising block, downward block, inward block, outward block and front snap kick and back stance with knife hand block.

After that, Sensei had us make some room and do one, of our current rank, kata very slowly.

After the kata,  we went back to some more kihon.  Sensei had us work on our focus while doing these basics.  The idea was do any movement that we wanted, at full speed and power, while he and the other Sensei’s walked around and tried to break our concentration.  I lost my focus two times.

We finished up class with one last kata at full speed and power.  My Jion felt pretty good but my mind and body was so spent from all the kihon, I don’t think it was as powerful as usual.

It was a great class and I hope that we have some like this one again.