2007 Workout #74: Sparring, sparring, sparring…

Tonight’s class was a sparring bonanza. We started off the night with a partner drill relating to Taikyoku Shodan. We got in groups of three and basically just went through the first four movements of the kata and used them to defend against different attacks. It was a good, basic set of sparring drills and the higher ranks got to continue working on some distance principles that we started on last week.

In between class, and I did some distancing drills working on extension and covering distance like we did with Sensei Quinn last week. I can’t speak for him, but I’m getting a lot out of doing drills like that and seeing how far we can stretch our techniques and have them remain effective.

The second class consisted of further basic drills, and since the intermediate ranks have officially left the building it was mostly brown and black belts. I got a little rowdy with a few people during three to five time attack but it was well deserved, and we were all black belts so I hope the rowdiness was well received. What’s a few punches between friends? 🙂

We moved into one time sparring, similar to the Shodan test. We lingered a bit on side thrust kick and back kick, for some reason my back kicks were functioning quite well tonight. I usually don’t complain too much when that happens!

It was a good workout, the EndoRush did me well, and much good karate stuff was had!