2006 Workout #43: Pullback in action!

I got a phone call at work today from stating that he would not be able to make it to Karate tonight, and could I make it so class could get going around 6 pm? I agreed, and thus lays the groundwork for my teaching the first class.

I decided to let Kathy lead warmups, since I’ve never seen her give that a try. She did a great job! I have really been thinking about hikite (pull back) as I’ve been going through Sochin lately. I’ve found it helps me keep my center firm and solid, and my technique strong. I decided to expand some wisps of ideas into full fledged smoke tonight: a whole first class devoted to the fine art of the draw hand.

I started simply: doing standing punch. We did this for a few sets while I explained the concept that I wanted to focus on for the night, and then I dove right into some simple hip action drills. We did reverse punches in place, standing punches to the angles, and reverse punches moving in stance. We did rising block, downward block, and inward block with reverse punch in preparation for some partner drills.

I decided that everyone seemed to handle that much pretty well, and it iwas time to see how they fared across from a partner. We did basic three time attack, and I had everyone focus on the draw hand the whole time. Most everyone was getting it, but I wanted to change things up after awhile.

I had everyone get back into their original lines and we did Taikyoku Shodan, but focusing entirely on using the draw hand to generate the proper hip action and power from techniques. After a few reps, I noticed that many people were kind’ve shorting everything after each block. I don’t know if this was something that Sensei Hartman explicitly did with us, or just something my brain concocted from shards of drills that I’ve done in the past, but I had everyone do the kata without the blocks, but with the drawing action still in place. That created a kata without blocks, but WOW did the punching techniques have some zing on them as a result. I let them put the blocks back in after a few attempts, and it seemed to improve the situation somewhat.

I think this went over relatively well for being a giant experiment, and I built on that good feeling that people seemed to have and had them get back with their partners and try to apply this stuff for one more set of three time attack to round out the class. I felt pretty good about how things went. I saw some yellow belts in there that were really showing off some good hip action, and that made me feel good about what I did during that class.

The second class was entirely kata-centric, I got to break off into a group with the aforementioned yellow belts and run them through Taikyoku Shodan and Heian Shodan several more times before we were done. Really, those ladies have some great spirit and pretty decent technique. They should be really proud of themselves!

Tonight also marked the triumphant return of who had been away recently due to some injuries. He did a good job getting back into the swing of things. Hopefully there will be much more of that to come. No Sochin tonight, the uneven tile floor in there has been playing a little havoc with that sore knee of mine. I’ll make up for it tomorrow night.

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Sochin Counter
Accomplished / Goal == Percent Complete
557 / 2000 == 27.85%
Average Kata per Workout: 15.47
Estimated Completion Workout: 130
Workouts that gained more than 1%: 13