We did our normal warm up.  The warm up felt good to me, even though it was a bit cold in the dojo.

Sensei Cieplik had us work on many of the normal drills like moving forward with front punch and moving forward with front snap kick.  We also worked on front leg toe tag with rear leg front snap kick.  Sensei also had us pay extra attention to the shin clash and knee sweep.

After that, Sensei has us work on doing the same movements going backwards.  Doing front punch, then reverse punch and kicking drills going backwards is a much different feeling.  The kicks really felt awkward and I need to spend some time on those outside of the dojo.

We then moved into some horse stance training.  Sensei had us do the sideways movement from horse stance to horse stance, paying extra attention to the way we finished the move after stepping across.  The idea is to step across and reach with the leading leg and settle into a solid horse stance.  It is hard to describe without pictures but if you think about the shape of a salad bowl, you can visualize moving down low and then coming into a solid stance after moving.  When then added the kicks including side thrust kick, side snap kick and side front kick.  Side front kick feels so much more natural than side snap kick.

Sensei also gave my son some homework.  My son is kicking with his shoulders but also he is putting his foot back near his knee, instead of out in front like a front snap kick, before throwing his side thrust kick.  This changes the entire movement and also causes him to throw what looks more like a back kick that ends up behind his center line when kicking from a horse stance.  I also feel that I am doing the same thing and need to work on correcting it.

Next we worked on a new drills.  Sensei had use stand across from a partner.  One person would grab the others arm and force them to tense that side of their body and keep the other side of the body loose.  The idea was to cause the person holding the arm to tighten the one side of their body while leaving the other side open, loose and vulnerable to  attacks to the internal organs under the ribs.  Sensei also showed us a couple of joint locks that are easily applied when someone grabs on to your wrist.  It brought back of lot memories when I took Aikido many years ago.

It was a very good class.

It never seems to fail.  Whenever I work my legs really hard at the gym on a Monday, we have a very hard class on Tuesday.  Today was in the catagory of very hard.

We started out with a warm up from Sensei Plocharczyk.  The gym was on the cold side and he certainly gave us a good but hard warm up.  We started with a jog to each quarter line on the gym floor.  After that, we shuffled sideways across the gym and back and then again but in a horse stance.  Next we ran across the gym with our hands behind us, trying to kick our hands with our heels and then we came back with our hands in front, trying to hit them withour knees.  We also low walks both forward and backward across the gym.  Those were really hard since the leg presses that I did yesterday hit the same muscles.  Then came some stretching and about 20 pushups.

Sensei Noia had us start with some simple sparring drills.  We stood in front of our partner and each of us tried to slap each others leg.  The idea was to keep our head up and get in and out quickly.

Next,  we stood across from our partner and threw three attacks and then it was our partners turn.  We started with punches, both blocks and reverse punches.   After that, we did the same thing but moved into kicks.  My front snaps kicks felt okay but my roundhouse kicks felt really slow.  I mean really slow.

We finished up our sparring drills with some free sparring.  The free sparring felt pretty good but I need to work on retreating after my attacks.  I can get in and score but I don’t move out fast enough.

After that, Sensei Noia had us do low walks again.  I lost count of how many we did but if my legs had a mouth, they would be screaming.

It was a great class but very hard.