In the Dojo: Core and Flow

The Thursday session in the Dojo was a low key affair, a lot of the time I was working with my son, as the only other students were another family pair, mother and daughter.  Stretches, Kata, and a particular "sticky hands" drill were memorable from that session.

Today's session in the Dojo was somewhat different:  I was wary of today as it was the first time I have ever done 5 consecutive sessions, and have been running low on stamina in some of them, but I needn't have worried.  We started off with core strengthening exercises (the shrimp, back breakfall and shrimp escape, front breakfalls, back breakfalls and rolls, forward rolls) and for the first time I managed to try the whole lot. 😊😊😊

After that, was a run through the fundamentals, punches, receiving, kicks and other stuff, such as hisa-geri, shuto and uke.  And then on to flow drills.  The quadrant drill presented (but not named) in an earlier blog was the core of the work, but we practised in in segments to start off with, firstly on the pads and then with our partner.  Each segment was done with a different partner.   The drill as a whole is presented again here for the sake of completeness:


#1   LH jab                        #2 RH parry, head to right
#1  RH cross                     #2 LH parry, head to left
#1   LH hook                    #2 Step in, two handed upper arm block and spread (Nidan)
#1  RH hammer fist         #2 Step back, cross arm block
#1  LH hook                     #2 Step in, two handed upper arm block, inc LH shuto to neck
#1  RH hook                     #2 Step back to cat stance, LH block
#1  LH backfist               #2 RH receive   
#1  Forearm  strike         #2 Naihanchi block, LH palm up RH palm down
#1  LH uppercut to ribs #2 RH Gedan Uke
#1 RH uppercut to ribs   #2 LH Gedan Uke
#1 LH haito to neck
#1 RH haito to neck
#1 grasp behind neck, using thumbs as 5th finger (gable lock)
#1 pull head down  switch leg back
#1 left knee strike
#1 switch legs, right knee strike
                                        #2 Head up, break out, link hands
#1 head butt

This was followed by the sticky hands drill as done in the Thursday lesson, with a partner inside block to inside block then base of hand to base of  hand and keep swapping wrist grasps.  Done firstly RH to RH, then LH to LH.  

We finished off with 10 minutes of pad work, followed by Naihanchi Shodan to warm down, a thoroughly challenging but fun lesson 😊😊😊