Denver Colorado Karate Classes Blog

Monday, September 26, 2005

Karate Training, Karate Boxing, Karate Sparring - Highlands Ranch, Co

The adult 7:00pm class was Form training and sparring.

Forms were to be performed in front of a small group of peers. I switched from Two-Man Fist Set to Pinan 4 but now at this late stage in the game, I won’t be performance-honed for Pinan 4 so I will not do tournament forms until the spring.

We then did sparring and were teamed up with a yellow, orange, blue/green and a green belt. I went real easy on the yellow/orange belts but cranked it up a notch on the green belt. Since it’s tournament sparring training, got to let loose once in a while.

Wednesday, September 21

Self Defense Training, Kick Boxing, Cardio Workouts - Denver, Colorado

Tonight’s class was centered on learning how to “slip” and “counter” a striking opponent. After warm-ups, we paired off and did one-for-one feigning with a strike to the face or chest and then positioning your feet to do a spinning back-kick to the ribs. Probably not very practical for the street but it’s for point sparring .

We practiced this for a while and then went into ring sparring. I paired up with another green belt and it was a good match between the both of us. He won 3-2. Next up was sparring with a black belt. He won 3-1. I received congratulations from some peers on the hook kick I delivered that got me the 1 point on the black belt.

Monday, September 19, 2005

Getting nearer to the tournament date so basically tonight’s class was focused on brushing up on our Forms in front of a small group of people.

Not much else to report on.

Friday, September 16 - 7:00pm - well past midnight

Question: How long was the test?
Answer: It was long.

Question: How hard was the belt test?
Answer: It was hard.

Question: What did you do?
Answer: We belt tested.

Wednesday, September 14, 2005

It’s tournament time so tonight’s karate class begins to focus on forms and sparring training.

We broke off into four groups of six and each group had to perform a form in front of the others. I did the Southern form and missed two hand strikes. I can do the form in my sleep but doing it front of your peers, it tends to make you rush. I picked Southern because everybody else will do Pinan 4 or 5 so standing out from the pack could be an advantage or it could backfire.

Next up on the agenda was sparring. The exercise was for one person throwing a back fist at you and then you react by evading the punch with DM 7 or some other evasive kick. I got paired up with a black belt and felt uncomfortable using a kick as a defense maneuver. My style is to launch kicks as an offense. Also, when I threw a back fist, the brown belt retreated and almost fell down. If this wasn’t an exercise, I would have pounced on him to take advantage of his imbalance but it was so I just watched him stumble.

Monday, September 12, 2005

Tonight started off on some intense warm-ups. First we did push-ups by doing 10 strict ones and then go down into the halfway position for 10 seconds. Then bang out 10 more, then half way down for 10 seconds and then another set again. Then the Sensei had us go down to the halfway position and hold it as long as you can until you drop to the floor. Out of a class of about 25 students, I was one of three students still holding the halfway position until the Sensei told us to stop.

Then we did as many crunches as you can do until you stop. I was up to about 240 crunches with a handful of other students until the Sensei stopped us.

After warm-ups, we did some half mooning with 8-pt block/counter strikes along with a punch and a kick thrown in. I kept on flubbing a few techniques.

After that we paired off and did our DM’s and Kenpo’s one for one. And then we formed groups of four to learn some new grabbing techniques and stabbing knife techniques.

Wednesday, September 7

This evening we focused on techniques to break away from an attacker who grabs both of your wrists. One technique was to rotate the hand with the palm facing upward, break the wrist hold and then shuto to the neck while throwing in a kick to the knee. The other moves got more complicated and too detailed to describe here but a couple of them were easy to administer and very effective.

Want to learn more and children’s karate and women’s self defense classes: http://www.ussd-colorado.com

Monday, September 5, 2005 - Labor Day

Tonight’s adult class had about 14 people in it which was pretty good considering it was Labor Day. We did our warm-ups outside in the parking lot and then proceeded to do line drills. First we did half-mooning with a right and left front knuckle punch. Then we did a front ball kick followed with two punches - both using our right and left sides.

Then we did combinations using shutos, crescent kicks, spear hands and hammer strikes. It was pretty difficult trying to coordinate all of the moves together into one flowing motion.

When it got to dark outside, we went back inside to learn a “Labor Day” move. It basically comprised of blocking the opponents incoming punch, followed with a shuto to the neck, forearm strike to the chin, palm heel to the face while tiger clawing to the groin, then doing a sweep take down, kick to the groin, tiger rake to the face and then an eagle’s claw to the adams apple.