This, friends, is the most terrible device ever to be allowed in a karate dojo. Tonight’s workout began with sparring basics: jab, reverse punch, jab-reverse punch, reverse punch-jab, front leg front kick/jab/reverse punch and the like.  We did these in a circle until the group was nice and sweaty.  Then we started in on the […]

Continue reading...

Sensei Tarrant provided a rare dan test preparation class on Tuesday night, with six black belts in attendance.  We went through the test combinations that he wrote down from an exam three years ago.  My Pekin dojomates may be interested to know that several of our old classics made an appearance: sanbon-zuki (three punches), jab […]

Continue reading...

Tonight’s practice was brought to you thanks to Sensei Hartman, whose Facebook post this week inspired me to get off my butt and get to the dojo despite a long and stressful week at the office. We started things out with a few simple basics to get warmed up (always nice), and then descended into […]

Continue reading...

Tonight was another great workout.  We began class with a large amount of basics, which took the format of slide in with reverse punch, slide back with a block, and then slide back in with another reverse punch.  We did a variety of face-level blocks: rising block, pressing block, high inward block, and high outward […]

Continue reading...

Tonight was my triumphant (ha!) return to the dojo, after a two month break.  Now that our Eve schedule is a bit more established, it’s high time that I get back to some stress-relief time and that means a return to the dojo.  We started the workout with a ton of basics in a circle, […]

Continue reading...

Tonight’s workout involved a series of punching and blocking combinations, working primarily on moving in with a punch and then cutting to the 45 degree angle and blocking and following up with a front leg kick to complete the attack.  The rest of the class consisted of kata, 8-10 minutes of your own kata followed […]

Continue reading...

I’m going to recap tonight’s workout, since apparently I missed about three workouts since the end of Kangeiko.  Tonight we started out with some simple punch/kick combinations.  We cycled through stances, kibadachi, front stance, back stance, cat stance, and rooted stance, and performed two punches, a rear leg front kick, then two more punches.  Shortly […]

Continue reading...

Tonight was a great workout, we started out with some basic punch/kick combinations to get warmed up, focusing for a brief bit on side snap kick.  After that, we moved on to partner training with the attacking side doing reverse punch, jab, then stepping out with the front leg and doing a backfist strike at […]

Continue reading...

Today was the last day of Kangeiko, which always brings equal parts optimism and complaining about creaky joints and muscles.  After warmups, we headed right into combinations.  Today, it was sanbon-zuki (three punches) done up and down the floor.  After that, Sensei had us perform a shuffle step with a front leg front kick.  First, […]

Continue reading...

Today’s workout was a good one!  Our combination for the day was: step forward with a downward block with one hand and a rear leg front kick at the same time, landing with jab then reverse punch.  He kept pushing the class to cover more and more distance, and I was proud to say that […]

Continue reading...