Today, Sensei Noia had us work on our sparring skills using only kicks.

Kicks only sparring….

We warmed up doing alternating kicks with our partner.  We did front snap kicks, roundhouse kicks, hook kicks and side thrust kicks.  We did a lot of kicks and I am guessing it was near 20 minutes worth.

We followed that up with one partner doing five kicking attacks and the other partner trying to block and counter but the counter attacks could only be a kicking technique.

We started free sparring but again, we could only use kicking attacks and counter attacks.

Attack the pad, with your hands…

We ended class with some pad drills.  For this drill, we could only use hand attacks.  For example, punches, ridge hand, knife hand, palm, back fist and back hand attacks.

Sensei Cieplik had us work on the famous power goes in drill today.

After our warm up we worked on our kihon.  We moved forward and backward in a front stance doing rising block with reverse punch, downward block with reverse punch, inward block with reverse punch and outward block with reverse punch.

Next, from a back stance we did moving forward and back with knife hand block, then knife hand block with front stance kick, then knife hand block with front snap kick moving into front stance with spear hand strike.  Sensei put emphasis on keeping the front foot quiet when moving forward in a back stance.  The idea is to move the front foot very lightly with the toes not the heels which requires most of your weight to be on the back leg.

Power goes in…

We partnered up and spent a lot of time working on hitting a pad. The movement is much like a vertical punch but it needs to have a distinct flick of the fist at the end of the movement.  Think of it as if your first s hitting the same area twice with one movement.

Loose arms are needed to execute this correctly.  Keeping the hand loose just until impact is key.  One movement that Sensei shared with us to loosen our arms is to lean forward so that the arm hangs down in front and move arm in a circular motion from the shoulder.  The best way to describe this movement is a rock (your fist) on a rope (your arm) attached at the shoulder.  The movement of the body makes the arm move not the arm itself.

We finished our class doing kata.  We started with Heain Yondan, then Heian Godan, Tekki Shodan, Jion and Bassai Dai each a couple or few times.

I am going to call this the summer of kicks and today was all kicks Tuesday.  Sensei Noia is having us spend a lot class time working on improving our kicks too.

For our warm up, we spent a couple minutes in a horse stance doing front punch, double punch, triple punch, rising block, inward block, outward block and front snap kick.

Let the kicks begin….

Like a tidal way, the kicks came rolling in.  We started with many roundhouse kicks which include single, double and triple kicks.  A real hip opener was front leg roundhouse kick, rear leg roundhouse kick and front leg roundhouse kick all on one count.

Next came front snap kick with side thrust kick.  We followed those up with a drill where we picked up our front knee to belt level and then hopped up and then did a front snap kick.

We then got a partner and pad.  We did started hitting our partner with roundhouse kicks, then hook kicks and then combination roundhouse and hook kicks.  We must have did more than a 100 kicks.

We finished up working on spinning back kicks and then double spinning back kicks, which were a little different to say the least.

I am sure that my hips will let me know how many kicks we did when I get up tomorrow morning.