Karate, 9/5/15

After a warm up, we learned a few one-steps. All are done against a right-handed punch to the face:

1. Parry with right hand as I evade to the back right, counter with right elbow
• I need to work on the parry:
• Don't over-extend my arm
• Parry with palm, not fingers
• Use hips for power in the elbow strike
• Choose my target
2. Parry with left hand as I evade to the back right, right ridge hand strike to neck or temple
• I need to work on the arc of my ridge hand. I'm going too "straight in"
3. Rising block with left hand as I evade to the back left, counter with right roundhouse kick and right punch to the ribs
• Need to work on judging my distance better so I don't have to readjust after my evasion. Lots of the efficiency of movement we're working on reminds me of aikido.
4. Rising block with left hand as I evade directly backward, counter with right front kick and right punch to the face

On all of these drills, I need to get used to evading away from uke. I think aikido and judo have made me want to enter. There are times shotokan enters (just like we can also evade away in aikido), but not in these drills.

Next we did some good old line work. Kihon can be hard work! I was ready to hurl a couple of times.

We ended the class with some light free-sparring. It was a lot of fun! Although I was uke for most of it, haha. I'm impressed with (higher level) karate's ability to fight from long range. I suppose aikido and judo are both technically grappling arts, and are usually within one or two arm's lengths. Toward the end I decided to try to stay in short range. There's definitely a different dynamic, but I didn't fare much better. I think my teacher has learned to deal with different ranges after 35 years of practice   ;-)

Looking forward to next time!