Shotokanplanet.org

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

Outside conditioning on the hill again – 8/2/08 – Saturday Karate class

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Saturday, in the park, think it was the 4th of July…

Sorry, that old song popped in my head when I thought about the tourture that Sensei Gatch put us through on the hill today.

Warm up that never ended…

For the warm up, we started by jogging down the hill, up the other side and then around the soccer field.  Next we went back to the bottom of the hill in groups of three.  One of us would sprint to the top of the hill, then walk back down and tag our partner who would then do the same and so on.

After that came front stance up and down the hill, then shuffle into horse stance up and down the hill and finally back stance up and down the hill.

We then walked over the bleachers where we had to jump on to the bottom seat and off for 15 jumps total.  Next, back to the hill for low walks and then bear crawls up and down.

We finally finished up with a cool down jog across the soccer field.

The more I think about it, torture might have been too light of a word for what we did today.

Karate on the outside – 7/22/08 – Tuesday Karate class.

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A serious warm up…

Sensei Noia had us do a really hard warm up tonight.  We ran back and forth across the gym at least 10 times.  Next, we did butt kicks, where your run across the gym trying to kick your backside with your feet.  Next, we did low walks both forward and back across the gym.  For good measure, Sensei had us jog across the gym four more times.

Taking our Karate outside…

I am not talking about a metaphor here, Sensei had us go outside to do our Karate on the hill behind the dojo.  We have not done this for sometime and the last time I remember having class outside was maybe two years ago.

We started sprinting up the hill for a fast warm up.  Next, we went down the hill, squatted down and then jumped forward until we got to the top of the hill.

After that we did a front stance at the bottom.  As Sensei counted, we went back up the hill doing the block or punch of our choice.  Moving up the hill was a challange since you had to squeeze with the front leg to pull ourselves up the hill.

The next movement was from a front stance, we did front snap kicks moving up the hill.  This hill is not just a gentle slope, it is a fairly steep climb and trying to balance while kicking is not an easy task.  We then did a similar move where we went back up the hills doing a kick of our choice.  I did both front snap kick and roundhouse kicks for that drill.

We also did pushups with our feet higher than our hands.  Sensei had us do 20 reps and it wasn’t too hard for me.

Next came kata.  We all did Heian Shodan together while trying to keep from falling down the hill.  It was not easy and the down hill movements and back stances were very hard.  Sensei then had us do our own kata.  I did Bassai Dai and it didn’t seem too bad.  I wasn’t able to use full power but I didn’t fall down either.

We finished our outside Karate by doing low walks all the way from the far top of the hill back to the dojo door.  We had to do at least 30 each leg and coming up the steep hill was torture.

Back inside…

Once we got back in the dojo, Sensei Noia had us do our own belt kata.  Since we were on the flat floor again, it should be easy, right?  I could hardly move my legs and the floor felt so sticky for some reason but I did my kata.  I still have some things work out in Bassai Dai.  Except for the last three moves, I can do alomst the whole thing now.

We then got a partner and worked on some one-step sparring.  Instead of the normal punch block, Sensei Noia wanted us to use the movements that we have been working with for the last few weeks.  My partner and I worked on movements from our belt kata, Bassai Dai.  These movements are starting to come easier than before and feel almost automatice at times.  We spent about 15 minutes going back and forth with our attacks and block and counters before class ended.

It was an excelelnt class.