It’s interesting how when you are working on something specific in your training outside the dojo, without telling your Sensei, he suddenly has a class that focuses on that particular thing.  For years, when I have been teaching or taking classes, it’s almost some type of psychic link that makes many of us think alike.

Today’s class was a perfect example.  In my training, over the last few months, I have been focusing on pulling with my front leg.  This often comes naturally to most students but it is something that I didn’t start focusing on until recently.  Even though I was doing it for years, putting the extra focus on pulling is making me move faster

Lots of horse stances

We started in a horse Stance with 100 single punches.  Next came moving horse stances with the last two moves from Heian Nidan.  After that we started in a ready stance and moved into a back stance with the mange uke and hook punch from Jion and then the same but with the double punch from Bassai Sho.

The next drill was moving forward in horse stance doing the moves from the last two drills back and forth across the dojo.  The same stances followed but with the palm strike, dropping block/strike from Jion and the double punches from Kanku Sho.

Partner stance drills

The next drill was had one partner wrap their Belt around the other partners hips and give them resistance moving across the dojo.  This was a reinforcement for the focus of pulling with the front leg.  After a couple of times across the dojo, we moved across the dojo without the belt.  The speed increase moving from stance to stance without the belt was huge.  Creating the tension with the belt and then taking it away really made a big difference.

We did the same belt drill again but this time we did Taikyoku Shodan.  Instead of moving forward, the added difficulty of the tension on the turns was a good challenge.  We did the same kata but without the belt again to see the changes from move to move again.

We finished up class doing four more katas of our choice.  With tired legs, doing four advanced katas was a another good challenge but that’s was good training is all about.