Denver Colorado Karate Classes Blog

Wednesday, January 31, 2007

It’s not easy hopping into the car to drive over to the dojo when it’s 20 degrees outside and will probably be 15 degrees when the karate class is over but I did it.

Tonights adult karate class was centered around using evasive techniques followed up with a counter-attack. We partnered up and did some simple drills where the partner punches in and you duck under the punch and counter back with a punch to the gut. Another technique was having the partner do a simple front ball kick while you shoot in at the 10:30 angle by blocking the kick, land a ridge hand to the chest or neck area, press with the left hand, deliver a back 2 knuckle punch to the temple and do a take down.

Monday, January 29, 2007

Tonight was a full review night and make up your own kempo routine.

After warm-ups, we started off doing our forms. I did all of mine fine except I started to do kata 4 when I was to do pinan 5. I regrouped after a few seconds. After forms, we did our DM’s with no problems. Then we paired off to do all of our kempos and I had 25 of them to do. Once that was done, we could then spend about 10 minutes to create our own kempos. Mince was:

- left hand knife block and grab wrist
- right front ball kick to mid-section
- right roundhouse to left side
- right side blade to mid-section again
- turn 360 degrees counter-clockwise and land a spinning hook kick to mid section again
- step up and thrust knee into mid section
- sweep stooped over opponent onto their back
- jump up landing on their face with both feet
- conclude with a left and right front knuckle punch to face and a foot stomp to face.

Wednesday, Janauary 24, 2007

Tonight started off with me in the #1 spot. First time in that position as a brown belt. We did some warmup exercises and then some kicking combinations while moving forward and backward. Also did some multiple hand strike combos that required some coordination.

Then we partnered up to do some buddha palm. At our level, our buddha palm hand position was very different (too hard to explain) and we did the buddha palm while half mooning forward and backward. This exercise required some concentration and coordination.

Monday, January 22, 2007

I was away for a week due to being on Sarasota but came back the following Monday to hit the ground running hard. The class started off with count downs. Brown and Black belts started at 10 and lower ranks started at 9, 7 or 5. I whipped through it pretty good and my wind was very good.

Then we moved over to doing our forms. I did Pinan 1, 2, 3 and 4 and Kata 1, 2, 3 and 4. Kata 4 footwork gets reversed on a couple of moves but I manage to recover.

Then we partnered up to do some pad work starting with crescent kicks and ending up with crossover side thrust kicks.

Wednesday, January 10, 2007

Tonight was basically a review night for the upcoming white-blue/green test being held next week. After are warm-ups, the Sensei had the class perform our DM’s and forms. The DM’s were called our in a semi random order and did all 20 well.

Then we moved on to forms. If you didn’t have that particular form, you would go off to the side and watch. We did Pinan 1, 3 and 4. Then we did kata 4. I misstepped in the middle of the kata (left leg forward instead of right leg forward) and quickly realized the mistake, made the adjustment and finished the rest of the form. Kata 5 was called out and I was off to the side of the dojo and watched.

Then we partnered up to do our kempos. I did all 25 pretty good but got stuck on the opening move for #15. I kept wanting to start off doing DM #15. When we got to #20, I went blank on that kempo. All of the others came out OK.

After that we did our overhead club techniques and me and the black belt learned another overhead which is assigned the number 11 to it. It’s a pretty cool technique that breaks their arm, flips them over onto their back and ends up with a hammer strike to the bridge of the nose.

Then we partnered up and did

Monday, January 8, 2007

Class started off with a light warm-up routine and then we partnered up to do our DM’s. The Sensei would say a random DM number and then you had to react immediately by doing the proper one. One partner would punch in and the other would do the DM. The Sensei had each side go about 5-6 times before switching to the other partner. After about 20 or so DM’s performed, we were to go one for one with the DM number being called out in a random order. I would say I did pretty well on all of them. Some I started out with the wrong foot move or arm block but then fell right into the proper DM move to finish it off properly. Overall it was a pretty good workout doing30-35 DM’s and getting thrown to the floor almost the same number of times.

Wednesday, January 3, 2007

Dojo was closed on Monday due it being New Years Day. Tonight’s adult karate class was ‘back to basics” night. First we started off with some warm-up exercises and the Sensei said we could do any type of push-ups (25 in total) that had the palm of your hands off the floor. I did mine on my finger tips and trying to go down the extra 5-6 inches was more difficult than I thought.

After that we started off with doing a review of our hand strikes and basic kicks. Then we were instructed to do Pinan 1. We did this two times and then the Sensei had us do Pinan 1 by doing a kick and a punch when turning and moving forward. We started off by breaking down the form into small sections which eventually lead to doing the complete form without stopping.

After that, we partnered up to do our DM’s with the attacker kicking at you instead of punching. We had to alter our DM to deflect the incoming kick and then counter back.