For the warm up, we did heian Shodan through Tekki Shodan. This is a always a good warm up for as long as I take my time. If I start off pushing the first Katas too much, my form breaks down and it sets the tone for the entire class. I realized that I don’t care if I am the first one done of the last, the key is doing the warm up and doing it well. Today, I did the katas slowly, with good form overall and the entire class felt better than when I push the katas from the start.

After the katas, we worked on some kihon. We started in front Stance and did triple kicks across the dojo consisting of front snap Kick, side thrust kick and back kick. After that, we did front stance with inward block, move into horse stance with elbow strike to the middle of the dojo and then the same techniques but we added reverse punch to the end. We did the same moving backward.

Next, we worked on outward block, jab and reverse punch moving forward and back. Next came horse stance stepping across with side Snap Kick and side thrust kick. We continued in a horse stance but with a shuffle into side snap kick, another shuffle with side thrust kick and a step behind with a side thrust kick.

After the kihon came kata. We picked a kata and did the stances only from it moving across the dojo in the straight line. This was harder than it sounds when doing a long kata like Gojushiho Sho. The point of this drill was to change of minds from doing katas in preset pattern to doing them in a line. We did the same but this time, adding the hand techniques.

Kata in a box

We did kata in a small space. The idea was to do kata in nothing larger than a six by six foot space, depending up how long your stance are.  It doesn’t matter if you have to switch feet between moves, you can’t move out of your box. Another good way to make you think out of the box, pun intended.

We finished up and did kata the normal way and then do it again with your eyes closed. Eyes closed kata is always a challenge. Oddly, I was told that I was all over the place, doing Sochin, but I ended up facing the correct way in almost the same spot that I started on.

This type of training really showcases why Sensei Noia is the team kata coach for our club.