Training Updates
Yesterday - Sunday 25th Feb (Heswall Dojo)
Class started with warm up and stretching exercises. After this Sensei had everyone performing kumite (sparring) drills, from a fighting stance ("kamai") we stepped towards an imaginary opponent, throwing left punches, right punches, kicks and blocking imaginary attacks; kind of like shadow boxing drills.
Tonight (Childwall Dojo)
It was a large class tonight, but it always is at Childwall these days. Class began with similar kumite drills that we did in Heswall - a few examples:
After basics the class was split into 2 groups (kyu grades instructed by Sensei Hayley and senior grades with Sensei Roy). The senior class was put into smaller groups of 3 - I was training with my good mates Wolfie & John Timo. The kumite drills flavour to the lesson continued, in our group of 3 one person was attacked on both sides, the other 2 did the attacking. The idea was that the centre man blocks 2 jodan attacks, one from each opponent (left leg from 1 and right leg from the other). This was quickly followed by 2 chudan, then 2 mae geri attacks. The catch: the person in the centre blocks each attack in quick succession but cannot use the same technique to block any attack twice! This became quite problematic after about 30 attacks - yes, after the mae geri kicks we did not stop and change so that someone else had a go, Sensei told us to keep going until he gave the signal to stop. (I am going to spend some time practicing this exercise as after a very few attacks I got a mental block and started using the same blocks again and again!)
Next the groups got bigger, we did "4 man attacks", which is really 5 people in a group as their are 4 attackers and 1 centre man being attacked. I was in a group of mixed grades, the exercise involved being attacked with 4 successive head height (jodan) attacks, then 4 chest height (chudan) attacks and finally 4 kicks to the groin (gedan) all of which had to be blocked using different techniques. We went twice around the circuit (centre man only blocked 8 attacks which is a kind of let off - usually we have to do this for 10 complete turns of 40 attacks!) then everyone one by one had a go being in the centre.
After our groups of 5 we changed to one-on-one sparring. Sensei told us this should be light sparring, or at least it was supposed to be, the bouts were only short (1 minute or so) but we swapped about and had a good few fights each. Then Sensei called the brown belt kyu grades to join in with the sparring and set up some uneven fights - my mate Paul (who is due to test for shodan in the summer) was pitted against Timo & Wolfie - a 4th dan and a 3rd dan. But was told later on that he gave it a good go, well done Paul mate!
The class tonight finished with kata training - black belts practiced Kururunfa kata with Sensei (some Shodans were taken through this for their first time tonight). Sensei also showed us some of the kata's application (bunkai) and we practiced them with a partner - then suddenly time ran out and the class was over.
