Sensei Plocharczyk worked took us through some conditioning drills to help improve our roundhouse kicks.

Warm up…

Sensei had us start in a horse stance and had each of us count to 10 as we did various punches and blocks.  When all was said and done, we ended up holding the horse stance will 25 people counted out 10 movements which came out to at least five minutes.

Roundhouse kicks galore…

We then spent the rest of the class working on roundhouse kicks.

We started with two partners and threw very, very slow roundhouse kicks at the partner in the middle.  The first kick was low to the knee, the second to the stomach and the third to the head, or in my case the stomach again.  Doing the kicks so slow was extremely hard and my hip muscles were screaming after just a few of these kicks.  I really feel that I have weak hip muscles and this type of drill might be just the thing to get them strengthened up.

We stood between the two partners again and threw a power roundhouse at one partner with a large pad and then turned the other way and threw a precise roundhouse at the other partner holding a focus mitt.

I could hardly walk after this class but it is worth it.