Sensei Plocharczyk gave us some old standard sparring drills and a couple drills that I have never done before.

Timing is everything…

We started out with some simple sparring drills.  The first drill was shift in and try to reverse punch our partner while they block.  The next drill was shift in and attack and our partner could block and counter at the same time.  What I mean by the same time is the block and counter happen almost instantaneous.  For some reason, my timing was better today day than when I have done this drill in the past.

Tap sweeps…

Sensei had us work on our sweeping techniques.  i do not recall ever doing these drills before.  The first drill had us us and our partner holding our shoulders facing each other.  The partner going forward would hook the front foot of the other person at the moment that the shifted backward.  Getting the timing right on this drill was not easy for me but I started to get the hang of it after many tries.

The next drill was similar but this time, we would stand sideways and our partner would face us and pull out front leg forward as they shifted backward.  This was a little painful for me since my flexibility is not the greatest but I got through that drill without much damage.

For our next drill, it was time to see what we learned.  The idea was to face our partner, while holding their shoulders again and we would try to sweep and take down our parnters.  The idea was not to use our strength, instead we needed to use of sweep and our hip postition.  It’s easy to muscle a partner down to the floor if they are not as strong but doing it on pure technique, is much harder.