Denver Colorado Karate Classes Blog

Wednesday, June 28, 2006

First we warmed up doing our DM’s one on one with each other and the higher ranked belts did it left handed. I am up to 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 ,9, 10, 12, 14, 15, 18 and 26 left handed. Can’t say they are all perfect yet.

After that we went into groups of 3 to form a monkey in the middle set-up. The person in the middle would face one of the other two and the person behind you would yell out a DM number. After you complete the DM, you then face the other person waiting to hear another random DM number yelled out. I flubbed a couple but at least did another DM in its place.

Then we wrapped up the night with the same groups of 3 doing hand and leg pad work. One pad is for 20 hands strikes and the other pad was for 10 kicks (your choice). We did this for 3 sets.

Monday, June 26, 2006

For quite a while during the warm up phase over the last few months, when the Sensei announces, “push up position”, I go directly into the up position while everybody else rests their knees until the Sensei tells all what type and how many push ups are required. Sometimes this decision can take up to 15-20 seconds. It’s not that long but it makes the actual push up exercise that much more challenging.

It gets even harder when you have to do 50 push ups, then stay in the upright position (not required to do so) and wait for the next round of push ups which could be 15 hands wide apart and then 10 diamond push ups.

Tonight we did an exercise where we divided up the class into 2 long lines of about 10 people each. We stood all facing one direction and separated ourselves by about 3 feet. The person at the head of the line now turns and faces the first person. The head of the line person is to either slide or do a shuffle step to avoid the incoming punch by blocking the punch and evade. Then you keep doing this on each person in the line going right of left. We did some harder blocks and dragon like moves that would be to complicated to articulate here.

The class wrapped up with doing as many push ups in 30 seconds and crunches in 30 seconds.

Wednesday, June 21, 2006

It’s getting warmer in the dojo when it’s 90 degrees plus outside.

It’s been a while since I have been training without any noticeable injuries. Up until about 30 days ago, my right ankle had a small tendon stretch too it, my right hand pinky knuckle was fractured and limited me from striking the pads head on without causing pain. My lower back had a small muscle tear on the left side that got aggravated when doing sudden torso turns and my left elbow was the classic tennis elbow that became hyper extended. I’ve lived with these small injuries since November, 2005. This week, it’s almost all gone which is a switch.

Tonight’s adult karate class focused on some basics again. We paired off and did some one for one punches or front ball kicks and the other person had to deflect the blow and offer up a counter strike. We did this routine using our right and left sides.

From that we moved over to an exercise that appears to be designed to push your limits on the amount of pain you want to withstand. With two people facing each other in a half moon stance, you first cling each others forearms with an outward block and then a downward block, grab on to each others forearms and then clang each others shins, then hook kick each other calves, then a swift roundhouse kick to the chest. We kicked each others shins pretty good and our roundhouses offered up a loud “thump.”

The next day, nothing hurt — that is good.

Monday, June 19, 2006

We didn’t really learn any death blows but it’s a catchy blog headline. Tonight’s class has few unusual warm-up exercise twists but nothing too different was done.

After warm-ups, we started in with pad work using our right and left arms to throw front jabs (front two knuckle punch) or whatever punch you wanted to throw. The purpose was to have speed , control and some power behind the punches.

Then we did some leg kicks on the pads to do a basic front ball kicks with speed, power and using good form.

Nothing but the basics but it was a good overall workout.

Wednesday, June 14, 2006

I think the understudy Sensei’s want to run you into the ground before the main part of the class starts. After our usual warm-up exercises, the Sensei had us lie on our backs while waiting for him to call out a DM. When you hear the number, you jump up, do the DM and then return back to the floor. I think we did a total of 21 total DM’s at least 4 times each for a grand total of going up and down off the floor 84 times. My wind was fine but started to notice around in the 60’s, my legs didn’t have the spring in them and it was getting difficult to do the DM properly.

After that, we did so hand grab techniques to slow down for the rest of the class.

Monday, June 12, 2006

We did some killer leg and abdomen exercises tonight for for our warm-ups. To work the gut we did 25 crunches, 25 spider crunches and 25 bicycle crunches. Moving over to the legs, we did 25 squats, 30 front ball kicks starting from the one-knee on the ground position and then 2o lunges. Then throw in the 50 pushups to round off the warm-up.

Mini-review tonight for a few people so we had to do our Kata’s in groups of 5 for the Sensei. I did Kata 3 and it worked for me. Then we partnered up and did our top 10 DM’s, one for one.

Then we moved over to pad work for more leg work. Doing 10 on each leg, we did reverse crescents, roundhouse, hook kick and spinning reverse hook (or crescent) kicks. Trying to do a total of 20 spin kicks in a row made us dizzy and messed up our coordination.

(Missed classes from May 24 to June 5 - out of the country)

Wednesday, June 7, 2006

After missing two weeks of karate classes and being 15 hours ahead in time zones, I expected a terrible workout tonight but it went OK. We worked on a lot of pad work using our legs tonight. For example, we would face the pad and do 10 front ball kicks without placing the kicking leg on the group. After the first ten, you switch legs and bang out another ten. The kicks we did were: front ball, side blade, round house and hook kick. That’s a total of 80 kicks with minimal rest in between sets.