Today’s class started out with some free sparring for a warm up and then we did kihon and lots of kata.

Get your balance before you kick…

We started our kihon drills doing some kicks.  Front kick to the front, side thrust kick to the side, back kick to the rear and roundhouse kick to the front.  One thing that I often do, when doing groups of kicks like these, is to try my best to hurry through them.  I am sure that this is certainly an ugly sight to behold but I know that my power and accuracy is way down when I hurry.  Sensei Noia told everyone, get your balance before you do the next kick.  This simple sentence made so much sense but for some reason it never really sunk into my thick skull until tonight.  Slowing down and gathering my balance before each kick made a huge mental difference to me.  I am not sure if my kicks looked better but they certainly felt better.  You would think this would be common sense by now but sometimes the nail has to be hammered into the wood more than once.

We did the same kicking drill, as above, but we added reverse punch to the end of the group of kicks.

For our next kihon drills we moved forward and back doing the following:

• Rising block with reverse punch
• Outward block, jab with reverse punch
• Inward block with reverse punch
• Downward block with reverse punch
• Inward block, elbow strike and backfist
• Back stance with knife hand block, front leg front snap kick, step down into a front stance with spear hand strike.

Best and worst kata…

We spent the rest of the class working on kata.  We started out with Bassai Dai and then Kanku Dai.  After that, Sensei told us to pick a kata of our choice.  Myself and a few others did Gojushiho Sho twice.  After that Sensei had us do Heian Yondan, then back to the kata of our choice again.  He then had us pick our least favorite kata, which is Tekki Shodan for me and do it once.  It’s not that I don’t like Tekki Shodan, I just don’t feel that it is my best kata.  We finished up doing the kata of our choice twice and class ended.

This class was different.  Different related to some drills that I never remember doing before.

We started out doing Heian Shodan through Heian Godan and Tekki Shodan and then back down again for a 12 kata warmup.  This we have done before.

Different drill…

After the kata warm up we did the “different” drill.  We started standing in a ready stance, from there we punched to the front with the left hand, then pivoted on our heels to the right and did an outward block similar to the moves from from Bassai Dai. We did the same punching with the right hand and then pivoting to the left.

We did the same drill with the punches but we did rising block, inward block, outward block, downward block and knife hand block.  I have a feeling that this was more of a hip opening drill, at least for me, but I will say it was a mental drill too.

We finished up doing kata, starting with Jion, Bassai Dai, Empi, Kanku Dai and ending with Gojushiho Sho.

We started with the normal kicking warm up doing all of the following moves while stationary:

• Front snap kick to the front
• Front leg front snap kick with rear leg front snap kick
• Front snap kick, side thrust kick to the side, and back kick to the rear
• Knee strike, front snap kick, knee strike, front snap kick
• Front snap kick, side thrust kick to the side, back kick, roundhouse kick to the front, hook kick to the front and front snap kick to the front

Shift in and jab with a salad bowl motion….

After our warm up, we worked on a shifting with jab drill.  When shifting forward, the idea is to move in a salad bowl (I really think Sensei Cieplik should patent this term) motion and drop down before the jab to get tension in the legs and then drive forward with the body letting the jab hand go forward and up into your target.  That dropping motion of the hip creates a great amount of power and lets the jab hand fly out very quickly.

Help your partner….

For the rest of class, we partnered up.  Sensei had all of the black belts and above on one side of the dojo and had a Kyu rank partner up with each one.  We started out doing one-step with green belts and above and three-step sparring with blue belts and below.

We started out in a group doing Jion with the 3rd kyu and after doing it twice, Sensei sent each of the 3rd Kyu with a Shodan or higher to help them work out the details of their kata.  One of the things that I enjoy most about working with others is that I also learn something about the kata that we are working on.  When sharing what I have learned with someone else, I have a moment to realize how I am doing the moves and how they can be applied.  It also makes me slow down and stop doing the movements automatically.  Doing Jion is always good kata to work with others on because it is all basic movements done in a sequence that flow together fairly well and can be broken up into sections.

As always, another excellent class came to an end all too soon.