Adult Karate Class Report 8-19-13
Angus Reid leading, Ron Milcarek & Jeff Chaisson assisting, 7 other students attending.
Had a great class full of enthusiastic people on Monday. Started off with the 10 and dynamic stretching, then did an exercise of kicks and kick combos in extreme slow-motion, taking the speed and momentum out of the action of throwing each kick, and using muscle tension and control to perform the movement. This allowed everyone, especially the beginners, to see clearly the actual movement, and I stressed for the more advanced students the importance of having muscular involvement behind each kinetic component of the kick, even the seemingly momentum-based ones such as the closing of the crescent kick across the body, and the turning and dropping of the foot into side-kick position in a crescent-side combo. When we'd done several single kicks and several combinations, we paired up and took turns first just attacking, while the other person figured out how to avoid or defend against such attacks, then turned it into what I called a 'pared-down shadow-sparring', with both people using the attacks we had practiced, trying to use the 1st kick of the combination as a feint or setup, and hit them with the 2nd kick. We spent a while on this, and everyone, even the white and yellow belts, was really getting it.
We ran through katas once, with the black belts assisting the beginners on their rank forms or on 'preparation' for the next form. I worked with Hannah and she seemed to know Seiunchin smoothly. I'd like to see how it looks when she puts more power and speed into it.
The last fifteen minutes we did a few passive stretches together, finishing with a forward bend stretch straddling the benches/mats placed about a foot apart, while dangling a medicine ball for more gravity. We held this for four minutes, and some students reported they found it quite intense on the backs of the legs.
