Denver Colorado Karate Classes Blog

Monday, March 30, 2009

March was a bad month for attending the karate classes. I was in Florida for two weeks out of the month and my total attendance at the classes will be four out of nine classes.

Tonight’ class focused on working in some hand/foot combinations for attacking while using some step-up footwork.

Monday, March 16, 2009

I was in sunny south Florida all last week and still managed to cover about 20 miles of running/walking over a 3 day period. Exercising at sea level is like running around with an oxygen tank. Feels like you can run forever.

Tonight’s adult kempo karate class was basically a review because people are being evaluated for upcoming rank placement. We covered a few kata’s, our DM’s (up to blue/green level) and kempos 1-22 (I also have #26, 27, 30 and 33).

On some of the DM’s and Kempos, I missed a foot movement or misplaced a hand strike now and then. Overall it’s good to cover the basics to uncover a bad habit or two and keep the muscle memory intact so that the lower rank material doesn’t get rusty over time. Out of 8-9 classes in any given month, a class like this should be covered once a month for the reasons mentioned above.

Wednesday, March 4, 2009

Tonight’s class was (I forget the specific term the Sensei used) doing some hand work with the pads. It progressed from doing palm heels, to willow palm to double handed willow palm. Then we put all of the strikes into one fluid movement that was linear and circular. The last part of the ending was doing a take down. Left block, left palm heel under arm to jaw, rt arm clinches arm at bicep, stretch them out, sweep the leg while pushing on neck and releasing other arm that is clinched. Ouch.

Stayed for an hour mini group of 3 private lesson. We took a couple of forms and broke them down into functional application by using a person to act as the attacker. Helped me better visualize how the form is supposed to work.

Monday, March 2, 2009

The evening class focused on taking some of the basic skills we have learned and applying them into a different exercise. Instead of the group doing hand strike combos into the air, we partnered up and did multiple combos up and down the partners body. Which included hand and elbow strikes.

Then we did a 5 minute DM exericise to review our top 10-15 DM’s using proper form and do them in about 5 minutes. Point was that home training can include this type of review within a short duration of time.

Then we did some pad work that included a front ball, reverse crescent and and roundhouse. The other set included a stepping stool, crescent and a reverse spinning hook kick.