Sensei Jeff Chaisson demonstrates how to do a Flying Side kick

The Approach

 The knee drives up

Flying Side kick

                                                                                                                                                                      

 The landing 

Lana Dean promoted to Yellow Belt

Saturday kid's karate class (second class), 3/1/14 - Sensei Chaisson

Good turn out this morning with Jack assisting.  We started with the 10 exercises with some jumping drills mixed in.  We moved on to partner stretching and then finished with pad work.  We worked various forms of roundhouse kicks, including jumping to try and work with some of the basics for the drills at the class start.  We ended with some jabbing, crossing, and upper-cutting. 

Deerfield Academy T'ai Chi class 2/23/14 - Sensei Chaisson

I had a private lesson today with only one student showing up.  We made the best of it and worked a good deal on the form once we were done with the warm ups and meditation.  Currently in the process of negotiating a spring schedule to continue to teach at DA.  I'm hoping to increase the frequency of the classes there.

Deerfield Academy T'ai Chi class notes - Sunday 2/9/14 - Sensei Chaisson

 I'm up to 6 for my class size today.  It felt a little different today due to the size though.  I didn't feel like I had as much control over the group due to everyone being a beginner and there being that many of them.  Something I'll have to keep an eye on.  We went through the warm ups, did some standing meditation and moved on to some arm circling drills for coordination and some stepping drills.  We ended the class working on the beginning of the form. 

Saturday Youth/Adult Karate class notes - 2/8/13 - Sensei Chaisson

We spent most of the class on pad work after the warm ups, crunches, and push ups.  We worked forward leg and rear leg roundhouse kicks as well as crescent kicks, elbows, and hook punches.  We ended working on forms.  Sensei and I handled the class together.

Adult Karate class notes - Thursday 2/6/14 - Sensei Chaisson

 We did some minor warm ups and harmony sparring to begin the class.  We then moved on to doing some sparring drills back and forth that had each person attacking or defending as well as some angle changing and countering.  We moved on to having one person attacking as quickly as they could and the other moving backwards and trying to defend.  We ended on a few rounds of regular free sparring.  Jack, Colleen, Ron, Scott and myself were there, and had 8 total.

Adult Karate Thursday 1.30.14 Sensei Chaisson

The class tonight went well.  Sensei started the class with some kicking drills.  We spent some time stretching and did some sit ups and push ups.  We then worked a good deal on joint locks from wrist grabs as well as the wedge, knees, and mobility throw from the wedge.  We ended by breaking off and working on forms for the brown belts and down.

Adult Karate class notes - Monday Jan 20, 2014 - Sensei Chaisson

 Monday night classes went well.  The arnis class had 7 in attendance including myself.  Jason, Luke, Phil, Colleen, Jack, and Lilly were all there.  We went through a large amount of basics without spending too much time on any one area to try and get a good feel for where everyone was at.

     The karate class also went well.  Besides myself, Jack, Colleen, Ron, Jason, Lilly, Scott, Mike, and Duncan were all in attendance.  We did some quick warm ups, worked a good deal on various roundhouse kicks, and ended with backwards throw to sweeping the floor and arm bar take downs.

Good energy by all.

Adult Karate class - Thursday 1/16/14 - Sensei Chaisson

Last nights class went well.  We spent most of the class working on basics.  We started off going over vertical punches with as much detail as I could add, went in to seisan stance detail, and ended up at stepping blocking and punching.  We followed that with some snap kicks and thrust kicks, again working on the nuts and bolts of the kicks.  At the end of the class we we worked on sweeping the floor (backwards throw).

Adult Karate class - Monday 5/20/13 - Sensei Chaisson

Monday's night classes went well.  The arnis class had 5 in attendance including myself.  We started out with some warm ups and twirling while walking in a circle.  We then moved on the the locking series to warm the wrists up further and spent a good deal of time on tappi tappi.  We ended the class with the 6/8/10/12 count drills.  The energy was excellent overall.
 
The karate class had 8 in attendance including myself.  I named the class "the science of the sidekick".  We spent the entire class working on different aspects of the sidekick, after the warm ups and stretching of course.  We started off with using our partner to put pressure on the kick as we extended and retracted and gave feedback back and forth.  We then had our partners hold a stick to kick over, focusing on knee position throughout the kick, the pivot, and how to carry momentum throughout the kick.  From there we went to defensive sidekicks to a body shield, focusing on the correct hip alignment and then tested it with our partners moving in on the kickers while the kickers had to work distancing to stop them.  We moved on to kicking a focus pad.  We used control and retraction at first, but then worked on kicking through the pad and getting the proper energy to penetrate, by making the pad move straight away from the kick.  The energy was good overall, though towards the end of class, it was getting difficult for some not to throw in some of the more fun aspects of the kick, such as shuffling and moving in large distances.  I had purposely tried to stay away from these things so that the focus was more so on the principles of the kick and not the application.  In all fariness though, it is not easy focusing on one technique for an entire class.  Great job by all.

Modern Arnis and Adult Karate - Monday April 29 - Sensei Jeff Chaisson

Monday night classes went well.  The arnis class only had three plus myself.  We started with a little twirling as a warm up, took a quick run through the stick and empty hand forms and then spent the majority of the class working on tapi tapi.  
     The karate class had seven plus myself.  Cheri came in and was able to participate.  I had her fill out a liability waver, though she said that she would only be able to make Monday nights and not be able to make it to Thursdays.  We started off with the 10 exersises followed by some floor stretches and the wallace roundhouse exercise.  We spent a good deal of time on some basic padwork, mainly backfist and snap kick.  We ended the class running through each form twice.  Once for detail and once at performance speeds.  Angus, Colleen, and myself split our time working with Cheri throughout the class.

Adult Karate class notes Monday Feb. 11, 2013, Sensei Chaisson

  Monday night classes went well.  We had a new student who joined both the arnis class and the karate class by the name Justice.  He is an acquaintance of Justin Lively.  The arnis class had four students plus Sensei and myself.  Sensei took Justice the first half of the class and worked on basics while I worked with the others on forms and then we swapped duties half way through.  The karate class had six students.  We spent the majority of the class working on basics.  Vertical punch, low/middle/high blocks, back-fist, jab/cross, snap kick, thrust kick.  We ended working in pairs on rank forms.  Justice had a chance to work with each of the black belts in the room.

Arnis and Adult Karate class notes - Monday 11/26/12 - Sensei Chaisson

Monday's Arnis class went very well, though somewhat unexpected.  I had intended to continue on in empty hand form 5, though before class had started, I had been warming up with a staff and was joined by those who started coming in to the room, so we spent the class doing solo staff drills as well as some two person staff work.  The class consisted of Phil, Jack, Scott, Colleen, and myself.  A great group to work with and great energy by all.
 
The karate class also went very well.  we had 6 total including myself.  We ran through a set of the 10 exercises, did some crunches as well as some lunge/sidekick and speed roundhouse drills to warm the legs up.  After a little partner stretching we went in to some pad work.  We practiced jab/cross with our partners telling us what our tells were and then had our partners dance around while we followed and threw the jab/cross as we could.  We also worked sidekicks to a focus pad, practicing the difference between a sparing sidekick where we focused more on control, retraction, and striking more with the ball of the foot and a "true" sidekick, where we focused on hitting with the heel and getting the proper penetration energy and retracting from a point past the pad.  We then spent the end of the class with a few rounds of free sparring.  Great feedback happening in between rounds by all.  I'm told I have a strange style of sparring... not sure if that's good or bad yet.  At the very least it means I'm unpredictable :)

Modern Arnis and Adult Karate class notes - Monday Nov. 5, 2012 - Sensei Chaisson

 We had a couple of smaller classes last night.

 

6 total for the arnis class.  3 black belts (Luke, Phil, and myself) and 3 upcomming testers (Scott, Colleen, and Jack) so the numbers worked out very well.  We had a small warm up followed by a quick run through of the forms.  We then broke in to pairs and each of the black belts worked with each other Scott, Colleen, or Jack for 15 minutes each on what ever they thought they needed help with before the test.  Good energy by all.

 

5 total for the karate class.  Ron, Colleen, Scott, Thomas, and myself.  Since we still had mainly folks who are going to be testing, I kept things more on the arnis side.  We went through the 10 exercises as well as some floor streches.  We worked the unfreindly hand shake on both sides.  We then moved in to knife work.  We practiced the heavy hand for checking, worked on the 5 disarms, ran through the flow drill (not sure what to call this one.  The attacker starts with a poke to the abdomen and follows up with another poke, slash, poke, and another slash as the defender reacts with an X-block followed by checks and passing and ends by taking the knife away).  We then moved in to a little free style playing and ended by practicing the two "knife held at throat" techniques.  I can't remember the last time I've seen those brought up in a class so I thought they'd be fun.  Again, great energy from all.

Adult Karate class notes - Thursday and Monday night - Sensei Chaisson

Thursday night karate class - Class went well, though low in attendance.  Only four in the room plus myself.  We started off with the 10 and moved on to some core strength and streching drills.  I had wanted to continue on with the snakey feeling from the drill we had been working on prior to class with the ball rolling, so I tried to apply it in to teaching the single arm variations (inside/outside) of trapping hands.  We spent the majority of the class on trapping hands timing and variations.  We ended the class with forward rolls, backward rolls, and kip ups.

  

Monday night karate class - 5 in attendance plus myself.  I decided to try and bring back the "night of 1000 kicks"., though I spent too much time on pad work in the beginning of the class and it ended up only being the night of 780 kicks.  We ran through the 10 and spent some time streching on our own to get the legs ready.  We moved in to the pad work afterward and worked all manner of snap, roundhouse, and cresent kicks.  We then did a drill I used to do in my personal practices all the time.  Each student had 100 kicks to throw, but they could only keep one foot on the ground at any time.  Transitioning from one foot to the other required jumping.  I then had each student come up with a kick combo that involved four kicks each.  After class was over, Colleen, Scott, and myself completed the last 220 kicks.  We did 100 more with only one foot on the ground, 100 after that in a shadow boxing format, and the last 20 being jump kicks.  A row of 10 consecutive butterfly kicks, and a row of 10 consecutive free style jump kicks.

Arnis and adult Karate class notes - Monday Aug 20 - Sensei Chaisson

Classes last night went well.  We had 6 in attendance for the arnis class.  We started off with the usual warm ups and light streching.  We then took a run through the forms and spent a little time learning new movements on empty hand forms 4 and 5.  We then moved on to the locking series and finished off with trapping hands with a focus on the timing and observations of when the timing changes.  We ended with a short discusion on how even moves that may seem like they only have one beat to them, still have three parts that can be counted as beats: intercept/block, neutralize, and counter.

     The karate class had 8 in attendance.  We went through the 10 exercises as well as some warm ups, strengthening drills, and partner streching.  The rest of the class was more focused on material requested by Scott and Lily since they have a big day coming up.  We worked heavily on SD.  The energy in the room was very light and each group was working on aspects of SD that they wanted to focus on, with a little guidance as well.  We then moved on to the locking series and ended with some rolls.

Adult Karate - Monday, July 23, 2012

Great group this Monday. There were requests for rolls and self defense, so I worked that into the plan. After warmups, we went into rolls. Everyone was able to work at their level - some on form, some with kicks at the end, and one group diving over pads into the roll.

After that, we worked on the locking series, and moved that into takedowns. There were 5 "stations" for different takedowns: mobility throw, backwards throw, armbar, overhead club, and the bridge. Mr. Chaisson did an excellent explanation of the overhead club for us. The variations on the takedowns were left up to each group.

I think all the groups worked well together - great instruction from all the brown and black belts. I stayed after class to work on forms with anyone who wanted to - we didn't have enough time during class!