Shotokanplanet.org

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

Karate class so hard, even my ears hurt – 9/15/09 – Tuesday Karate class

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In an effort to help prepare us for our Karate examinations, Sensei Noia has been working on our physical conditioning.  Needless to say, we have been having some of the hardest Karate classes ever.

Kata and burpees….

We started class with a run back and forth across the gym at least eight times.  This got the blood flowing and my legs warmed up for what was coming next.

Sensei Noia had us do Heian Shodan followed up with 15 to 20 burpees, after that we did Heian Nidan and another 15 burpees and then Heian Sandan, Heian Yondan, Heian Godan and Tekki Shodan with a set of burpees in between.  I was only able to do 10, 10, 5, 5, and 5 reps of the burpees.  I really need to work in this movement.

For those of you that are unfamiliar with burpees, you start standing upright, squat down low, throw you legs out behind you into the top of the push up position, do a push up, pull your legs back up into the squat position, jump up, off the floor into the standing position.  There are a bunch of videos on www.youtube.com demonstrating this exercise if you want to see it in action.  If you haven’t done burpees before give them a try, they are a really intense exercise.

Work those stances….

Sensei Noia focused on our stance training.  He had us get a partner and stood across from each other in a horse stance.  One partner put their left hand near their partners chin and punched as Sensei counted.  The other side the drill and then as one partner punched, the other side did rising blocks while holding the horse stance for 50 punches and blocks each.  We then did a similar drill but instead of a horse stance we did a shiko dachi where our toes were pointed out but our legs, thighs, were closer to parallel with the floor.

We then did a drill in a cat stance where we did a gedan knife hand block.  We then did the same stance but with the gedan knife hand block and a reverse punch.  The last drill in the cat stance was front snap kick, gedan knife hand block and reverse punch.

Next came holding a stance and counting to 10 in Japanese.  We started in horse stance, then shiko dachi, then cat stance with both left and right leg forward, back stance with both left and right leg forward and front stance with both left and right leg forward.

After 35 minutes of stance training, Sensei had us finish up with one kata.  He had us do our belt rank kata but as slowly as we wanted to do.  It took me almost four minutes to do Bassai Dai but I don’t think I could move any faster if I had to.  I might have exaggerated about my ears hurting because class was so hard but pretty much every part of my body hurts now, which is good.

Sensei Noia mentioned that we should try to practice our stances every day.  It doesn’t have to be as intense as our class but even five minutes a day will help improve our stances.

Better horse stance means better Karate – 3/2/09 – Monday Karate class

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Sometimes it is not what is said, it is how it is said.  Today was one of those enlightening moments that don’t come around often enough.

Good tension…

Sensei had us start class working on our stances by going through some of the Heian katas.  When doing a blocking stance, Sensei wants us to have our leg tension to the outside and when doing a strike our tension needs to be to the inside.  When the tension is on the outside, the back leg is slightly bent and the back hip is open and in a striking stance, the back leg is straight, the knee is facing down and the hip is closed.  We did Heian Shodan and Heian Nidan paying all attention to the tension of our legs and the position of our hips.  Sensei also had us make sure that we pushed the pelvis up and tightened the ab muscles at the end of each move.

Many good things can come from a good horse stance…

Sensei Brien shared an interesting lesson tonight.  He had made a comment that if your horse stance is good, your front stance will be good, your back stance will be good, your roundhouse kicks will be better, your side thrust kicks and your Karate will be better in general.  There is a lot of good things related to horse stances.

Sensei had us work on a tough horse stance drill.  We moved into a horse stance and then stepped to the side and brought our feet together and then pushed back into the horse stance.  Sensei wanted us to push into the stance and lock our muscles to stop ourselves.  When doing the horse stance, Sensei said that our gi pants should have a line across the front when the proper tension is applied, the knees need to be pushed out as far as possible and the gluteus and ab muscles need to be engaged fully for the stance to be correct.

This explanation about tightening the gluteus muscles really hit home for me.  I have been told this in about 10 different ways over the last few years but this small little change in words gave me what I needed to finally get it.

Saturday Karate class – 6/14/08 – The dojo floor is pretty hard.

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Sometimes, during Saturday classes Sensei Plocharczyk will have us do some self defense moves. I really like classes since I see how to apply the moves in my kata’s with more detail and explanation.

We started with a brisk warm up and then got right to it. Sensei had us get a partner and pad and line up across from each other. For the first movement, he had us both stand in a horse stance, our partner would hold the pad and we would shuffle in behind them, but only half way to get beyond their center of gravity, and throw something like a downward block but ending with the hand in the hammer fist position. The idea was to give them a hip check, get down low enough to come up under their hip, put our foot a little past their center of gravity and then hit them with the downward hammer fist and throw them down to the floor. We didn’t take our partner down but we worked on both parts of the movement, the stance and arm motions and then put it together. Sensei demonstrated the movement on my me and I ended up looking at the ceiling a couple of times which explains the title above about the dojo floor being pretty hard. The floor really isn’t that hard but I like to throw in a little drama every now and then when I type here.

Next came a movement that was very similar, except we did a ridge hand to our partners upper chest and started in a front stance instead of a horse stance. In this movement, we still used the hip check and the horse stance but used the other arm to throw the ridge hand. I seemed to be able to do the stance or the ridge hand separately but doing the movement in a fluid motion escaped me for some reason. I ended up using my upper body more than anything and I think I could get my horse stance low enough because my legs were still extremely sore from last nights class.

Next came the test of what we learned. Sensei had a couple of pads on the floor and we were able to test our newly learned skills. I was able to take down my partners but I was using more upper body power than anything. I need to spend some time working on this movement. I also think that applying Sensei Cieplik’s salad bowl movement when getting into the horse stance would help me make this movement more effective.

We also spent some time on conditioning and did a kata but I wasn’t able to squeeze the floor too well when I did Jion since my legs were screaming from last night.

It was another excellent class.