Noon hour class

I'm sure you'll be relieved to know that I've decided to accept I live in an extreme climate and high humidity and heat in the summer is "the norm" and thus not something I should repeatedly complain about. I've given myself permission to mention that it was humid and hot at class, but no longer to whine about it ;)

I took in the noonhour class at the "Instructors" club today, with two other karateka in attendance. We warmed ourselves up and then Sensei started the class at 12:15, then worked us until about 12:50. Relatively "short" workout, but when there are only three students, (and it's in the heat of summer) that can be a damned good workout despite its length.

We started out with standing punches, where the main focus is on starting the punch from the hip (heel to hip to target) vs the shoulders, which is a big mental shift for many people training karate. Especially men who are used to generating their power from their arms and shoulders in a punch, apparently. Personally, I don't get feedback that tells me I have any problem with starting my punches from my shoulders, but I mention it here because it's something that a lot of people DO have problems with, and because I'm not entirely sure it's because I'm a woman that I don't innately have that problem.

My main problems when it comes to punches in general, no matter if they're standing punches or punches executed in a stationary but low-to-the-ground stance or punches executing while I'm moving are as follows:

• I let my punching shoulder extend too far out at the moment of impact. I need to focus on squeezing my armpit into my torso at the moment of impact (instead of letting my arm "float out too far") so I'm properly connected with my muscles at that key moment. If muscle connection is not "right on", there's a lot more chance that I will hurt myself when I hit someone else!
• I punch across my body's centre line. I consider this something I did because a lot of fellow students don't punch to the centre properly and thus the whole class gets reminded regularly to punch to the centre... and now I'm doing it too much ;)
• The line of my punch from hip to target is not straight. It's fine up until the moment I twist my fist at the near-end of the punch, but somewhere in that twist my hand is going up and then coming down onto my target, which severely changes the direction and amount of energy present in my landed punches.
• I open and close my hands between punches - I need to keep my fists consistent in some usefully closed position.

Then we moved on to hip rotation practice (standing punches are hip vibration practice) by stepping left foot forward into a front stance, then starting our punching position in a reverse punch (opposite arm forward as the currently-forward leg). From here, we keep our feet in the same place but execute alternating jab, then reverse punches while focusing on generating drive for the punching techniques from our back leg and from proper rotation of the hips and legs. As with all techniques in Shotokan karate, what's going on with the legs and hips is far more important than what's going on with the arms.

Continuing on with basics to warm us up more, next we did stepping punches going forward, then stepped backwards doing a 3-part combination of upward block, front leg front kick, reverse punch.

So, yeah, by this time in the class, I'm already puffing and panting. My endurance sucks worse than anyone else's at class but I keep working at it.

Next we ventured into kata. We went through Kanku Sho a few times to reinforce this kata as we've been going through it semi-regularly at previous classes and all three of us pretty much had the general gist of the kata down well enough for Sensei to start to work with us on parts of the kata we were especially weak at. Since I was training with two men over the age of 50 who aren't very flexible nor naturally athletic, side kicks got some special attention, which was just fine by me.

After going through Kanku Sho three or four times and answering all of our questions about the various pieces of the kata, Sensei decided to take us through Go ju shi ho sho. I personally have gone through the kata about 30 or 40 times, but not on a regular basis enough to keep the entire thing memorized. My familiarity with the kata made it a lot easier to go through, however, because once the memories were tickled I remembered a lot of the combinations and with guidance didn't have a lot of troubles going through it all.

The class was only, what, 35 minutes of training? But I was drenched, once again, and tired. Exactly what I want to be at the end of a good workout!!