This was another week of kicks but this time, it was Crescent Kicks.  The last three classes have been focused on kicks and today was another day of many kicks, along with some other good stuff.

Warm up with kicks and knee strikes

We found a partner and did alternating shuffle up with front leg front snap kick, shuffle up with front leg side thrust kick and stationary back leg front snap kick to our partners stomach.  This is a really good drill to get the hips warmed up to prepare for more punishment, I mean training.

After that, our partner held two pads and we did knee strikes to our partners stomach.  We put both hands on our partners left shoulder, pulled them down and did a knee strike with our right leg.  We did the same with the opposite leg for a total of 30 to 40 knee strikes.

Crescent kicks with both legs

Normally, in the Shotokan katas, whenever we execute a Crescent kick, we use our right leg.  I don’t recall any kata with a left leg crescent kick and the following drills made me realize how out of balance my right leg crescent kick is compared to my left leg.

Next, our partner, in a cat stance, held a pad and we did crescent kicks with both the right leg and then the left leg.  We started facing our partner doing many crescent kicks and then we did the drill again starting in a horse, standing at a 90 degree angle from our partner.  We do not do many drills were we hit something with a crescent kick but this was an eye opener for me, seeing how powerful this kick can be.

More kicks and some kata moves

After we finished with crescent kicks, we did some kihon.  We did a handful of moves from Jion where you bring your knee up, drop into a horse stance and do a dropping strike.  The idea here was to bring the knee up fast and strong, much like how we did the knee strikes earlier. After that, we worked on the knee strike near the end of Heian Yondan, focusing on bringing the knee up fast and strong.  We also worked on the low side thrust kick from Bassai Dai focusing on, you guessed it, bringing the knee up fast and strong.  We did these two drills for a good amount of reps before moving on to kata.

Class finished with three katas.  For the students who are testing, they did their rank kata three times and for the rest, we picked the katas of our choice.  For the last two katas, we had our partner stand across from us and watch our kata, giving us a score of one to five based on our power and intensity.  The main point that Sensei Noia made about this was even though we sometimes think we are giving everything we have in our mind, we might not be doing so unless someone tells us.  I thought the first kata my partner watched was strong but after I talked with her, my second kata was even stronger.  I almost fell over because my legs were so tired but it was much stronger than the first.

Class summary:

• Warm up with three kicks and knee strikes
• Many crescent kicks
• Strong kata and then stronger kata