This class was what I describe as a roundhouse clinic because more than two thirds of the class was spent doing roundhouse kicks.

And the kicks began….

We warmed up with front snap kick.  Then we did knee strike with front snap kick and knee strike.  Next came front leg front snap kick with rear leg front snap kick.

We moved on the stationary roundhouse kick where we kick to the front and then put the kicking foot back down behind us.  We then did stationary vertical knee strike many times, so many I lost count.  We then partnered up and hit the pad with vertical knee strikes.

Turn on the heals…..

Although we have been told this many times, when doing Heain Shodan, Heina Nidan and Heian Sandan, turn on the heels for the moves with knife hand blocks.

For the rising strike (block) on the third from the last and the last move of Heian Nidan align body for maximum power.  Your back leg and rising arm should almost form a diagonal line.

In Heian Sandan, the crossing arm movements are arm breaks but with zanshin between each move.  First cross arm move breaks the attackers first arm, then pause and wait for possible second attack, then second cross arm move breaks attacker second arm.

This was one of those lightbulb goes on over my head classes today.  After eight years of training, I think my mind and body finally understand the concept of kime.  Sensei Noia gave us a class tonight that focused on kime, a Japanese word that is defined as power or focus depending upon who you ask or what you read.  Even though Sensei Noia and my other Sensei’s have shared this with me before, my mind and or body just wasn’t ready to accept it.  More to come below.

Push your partner across the dojo….

We started out in a front stance facing our partner.  From there, our partner stood in front of us and either put their hands on our shoulders or our belt.  From that position, we moved forward as our partner stepped back while giving us resistance.  We moved a quarter of the dojo at a time with our partner adding more resistance after 10 moves or so.  We went from light resistance to almost immovable non movement.  We did the same drill again but this time, one of us was in a horse stance while our partner gave us resistance again.

Tense every muscle in your body and hold it….

Sensei had us step into a front stance.  From there, we did either a block or punch and then we tensed all of our muscles at the end of the technique and held them for five seconds.  We did this rising, inward, outward and downward blocks along with front and reverse punches.  We also did this in a horse stance with various block and strikes and in back stance with knife hand blocks.

Kime…

What we did above was the lead in to kime.  We started with a very slow Taikyoku Shodan moving into the first move (left foot forward with downward block) and at the end of the technique, we tensed all our muscles again.  From there, we relaxed and moved into the second move (right foot forward with front punch) and again, we tensed all of our muscles again doing the same pattern for the entire kata.

We also did Heian Shodan doing the same as above slowly and then moving from move to move faster but still getting the full tense at the end for at least a two second count.    We did the kata again doing one move fast and the next move slow but still with the same tensing and hold at the end of each move.

We moved on to Jion doing each move slowly but tensing at the end of each move again up to the first kiai.  We also did Kanku Dai three times the same way.

The pattern above is to tense all of the muscles at the end of each move and release them so that we can move to the next move. If I can explain Kime in simple terms, it is the focus of all those muscles tensing at the end which allows us to execute the technique with our entire body focusing on the area of impact.

This is something that you have to feel to really understand but once you do, the light bulb will turn on and the technique will shine!

There seems to be a trend related to kicks.  If I had to guess, Sensei Cieplik is seeing something in our front snap kicks that we really need to improve upon.  If I was a good guesser, I would guess that many of us (me being more guilty at this than most) are letting our kicking knee drop after we extend our lower leg instead of raising the knee higher.  Doing so causes the leg to straighten much like a front thrust kick instead of a front snap kick.  This also places a great deal of stress on the knee and the hamstring muscle of the kicking leg.

Fix those kicks by doing kicks….

We did many front snap kicks but the corrective movements were knee up to the shoulder and hug your knee.

For the knee up to the shoulder, we started in left foot forward front stance, put our left hand across our body, at our right shoulder level and then raised the right knee and touched it to our left hand.  The key is to bring the knee to the hand and not to lean over and break the upright posture.

I always felt that the knee up hug was harder than the drill above.  For this drill, we started in a left foot forward front stance and then pulled the left leg to our chest and hugged it.  Again, the main key is keeping the upper body upright throughout the drill.  Bringing the chest to the knee causes a lot of stress on the lower back (lumbar spine) and cancels out what the drill is supposed to be doing.

Make each move a separate kata…

Heian shodan  42 seconds. Finish each move, stop, go again.  I have done this one my own before and it really make the kata feel different.  Sensei mentioned, make each move a separate kata.  In my opinion, for sport, we move as fast as we can from move to move but when training for ourselves, we can make each move count and know that all attackers that we defeat in our kata are just that, defeated.

Drop into a back stance or get hit….

We spent the rest of class working with our partner.  The first drill started with one partner punching at our face and we stepped into a back stance keeping our face just out of the range of punch.  The idea behind this drill was to drop down into a back stance instead of moving forward.  A punch coming at the face makes the drill work just the way it should unlike doing the drill without it.

The next drill was to have our partner do a knife hand block ensuring that their hand was turned, showing the forearm to engage the lat (upper back) muscles.  This also keeps the arm inside the body.

We finished up with a shin clash and twist to our partners leg.  As they step into punch, we step into to their leg, hit their shin bringing our knee to the inside of their leg and then push and twist our leg to the outside.  This pushes our partners shin and takes them down to the floor.  Even if the attackers leg is extremely strong even, the smallest of people can take them down because of the position it puts the attackers knee in.  It’s moves like these that allow smaller and weaker people to survive attacks from larger more powerful attackers.