09.24.05 - Saturday Training

New items today:

1. Kick: Rear Leg Roundhouse
2. Kick: Replacement Side Kick
3. Maneuvering Drills

Reviewed other items:

1. Maneuvering Drills
2. Technique: Thunder & Lightning
3. Technique: Escaping Ram
4. Technique: Thrusting Release
5. Form: Orange Belt Form

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Kick: Rear Leg Roundhouse
This kick is pretty much exactly how it sounds as you are executing a roundhouse kick with the back leg of your stance. However, I was finding some interesting things going on with my legs as I tried to resemble what Bill was doing. The same kick in TKD is different and I found myself immediately going into TKD habits because they were comfortable. I have found that since I kick with the ball of the foot in Kenpo, the initial alignment of the leg and foot are critical to making it work. In TKD I kick with the instep of the foot and it seems to afford more room for error.

This kick in Kenpo requires the same core aspects as the replacement roundhouse kick in that you are centered over the leg and maintain that control. There is a roll in the hip and a snap at the knee, as well as striking with the ball of the foot. More details are in the technical side of my notes.

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Kick: Replacement Side Kick
This kick was completely new to class in Kenpo but still has many familiar aspects as the other kicks. Still centering over the main support leg, but this time the knee comes up and the leg extends out with about the back third of the outside ridge of the foot being the primary striking surface. The three key points that were emphasized in class were to flex the toes up, roll the hip, and bring that knee up. Bill also suggested visualizing or actually practicing in a narrow hallway as this kick is linear and compact in nature. The back third of the outer edge of the foot is used because you have the strength and mass of the entire leg behind it – penetration and effectiveness are the result. Bill did warn not to get lazy about flexing the tows up when kicking. Failure to do so can possibly result in injury to your foot.

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Maneuvering Drills
We worked on some pretty basic maneuvering drills this morning. I call them basic because they consisted entirely of footwork that we have used and practiced with to this point. However, I was surprised at how easily confused I was in moving in these new patterns. If nothing else, it shows that I’m still not ultimately comfortable with the footwork and need to continue to practice until I can flow from position to position without so much concentration. Some of the drill combinations were as follows:
- Step-drag, ball kick, step through
- Step-drag, back fist, ball kick.

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Form: Orange Belt Form
Alexandra and I reviewed the form again together this week. We didn’t spend a lot of time on it but we did it a couple of times and received critique from Bill and the Purple Belts. The main item that came up the most in the critiques was that the blocks need to be accurate and they need to ‘snap’ into place. On several occasions now, Bill has mentioned how the torque used in the blocks starts out in the arms but eventually you will be comfortable enough that you will ultimately have your whole body involved in the motion. I can see it when they do it, but I’m still working on it myself.

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Techniques: Thunder & Lightning, Escaping Ram, Thrusting Release
Alexandra and I went through Thunder & Lightning as well as Escaping Ram relatively quickly for purposes of review today. However, most of our time was spent focusing on Thrusting Release. This was one of the techniques that I was exposed to out in California when I went to the WCKC with Bill and Walt. Shawn Monday and Jerry Brooksher went through this with us and I immediately had questions for Bill when we returned. Because of this, I felt a little more comfortable with the general mechanical movements and spent our practice time trying to tune them in. There is a certain flow of movement and energy that just works good when you do it correctly. I’ve had it a few times but it isn’t consistent yet.

Alexandra was less comfortable with it as this is only the second time we have actually worked with it in class. The first time was at least a couple sessions ago and it wasn’t an in-depth study of the technique. Working with her reminded me that I need to watch my hands as they come forward… they should come up to the floating ribs at a 45 degree angle from their points of origin at my sides (since my arms are presumably pinned). I had originally been bringing my arms up my sides and thrusting forward with them. It actually took some time and practice for me to break that habit and I don’t know why. I couldn’t think of anything else that I currently practice that would conflict with this type of movement. Regardless, I’m better at it now and still improving.

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Final Notes at the End of Class:
- Lasagna dinner at Bill’s place set for Saturday, October 1st at 5:00pm
- There will be no practice on Saturday, October 8th as Bill and I have to work
- Kenpo practice in Vass, NC on Saturday, October 22.

09.10.05 - Saturday Training

New Items Today:

1. Guest: Nick

Reviewed Other Items:

1. Kick: Roundhouse Kicks
2. Technique: Thunder & Lightning
3. Technique: Escaping Ram
4. Form: Orange Belt Form
5. ¼ Speed Sparring
6. ¾ - Full Speed Sparring

Nick is a Guest with Us for the Day
A college student named Nick joined our workout today. His background is American Kenpo but I suspect he may have had some training in another discipline. He wore a level of brown belt and was afforded the recognition deserved for his rank in class. He has an invitation to spar with us any time but at this point it doesn’t appear that he is going to become a student of TKI.

Thunder & Lighting and Escaping Ram
We practiced these techniques today with the purple belts rotating out so we could practice with different perspectives for different people. I had a lot of feedback from Walt and Alex and jotted it down for my Technical Journal. I think I’m improving in the techniques but it still isn’t perfect yet. My biggest issue with Thunder & Lightning is that I tend to move more to the 8:00 position (laterally) instead of to the 7:30 (45 degrees) off the line of attack. I’m not sure why I keep doing that, but need to practice more. With Escaping Ram, I had a lot more feedback regarding the snap in the arms, position of arms while kicking, measuring the gap and when to look when making the adjustment step. It was a great practice session and I learned a lot.

Orange Belt Form
My movements within the form are getting better with practice but Bill suggested that I focus on shooting the blocks with more accuracy and put some ‘snap’ into them. I’ll work on it.

¼ Speed Sparring
I was able to spar with several of the guys, including our guest, Nick. I actually had a pretty cool take-down on Walt because I caught him while he was showboating a little bit. There were some specific things I learned from each of the guys though and made notes this time:
Walt: I was experimenting more with combos this time. Walt was covering pretty good and we discussed at one point that I needed to look at creating openings and not just waiting for them to happen on their own as a good fighter may never give you those kinds of gifts. The obvious always seems that way when you put it in print.

Nick: Sparring with Nick was more reminiscent of the sparring classes in Taekwondo than in Kenpo. Nick has longer legs and likes to kick. After noting this pretty quickly, I tried to crowd him to keep those feet on the ground, a tactic that was at least partially successful. Nick connected more often on me with kicks and I did better against him with punches, knees & elbows. He is accurate with his kicks and got them inside on me at times even when I thought I had him covered. Nick also seemed to adapt fairly well as he responded well when I moved in from the side. The times I did best on him was when I stepped inside a high kick and took him off his center.

Phyl: I had to defend low move to the side a lot today with Phyl. He seemed more aggressive and more linear than he usually is. Often times we clashed with footwork and had a tendency to get tied up. I don’t know that there was anything very pretty about our sparring session this time. There were a few times that he grabbed my gi and waited for me to come in. He caught me on the first one, but that was it. For the most part, all I felt I could do when he came in with some of the combinations was retreat, but when I was able to get inside, I did okay.

Alex: Still had problems with Alex. He is a tight little ball of protection when he is sparring and I just had a tough time with it. I finally said something about it as he was mostly waiting for me to advance on him. At this point we discussed creating openings again and he gave me some examples. He also showed me some basic but effective pressure points that just cause annoying pain when you can’t get to anything else. He and Phyl have both driven a knuckle in the back of my hand when I wasn’t in proper position but Alex took it further and showed several pressure points along the upper and lower arm. Although these aren’t critical targets, they can wear an opponent down or cause them to lower their defenses temporarily, thus creating openings for more critical strikes.

Bill: I didn’t spar against Bill this time but he walked around and gave some critiques to everyone. He mentioned to me to lift my head. He explained that this will help increase my peripheral vision and allow me to see more of what might be coming at me!

¾ - Full Speed Sparring
Bill, Nick, and the purple belts put their gear on and did some additional sparring. They took turns rotating in and out, each doing a 2 minute round with 2 different opponents. Unfortunately, Walt re-injured his shoulder and was sidelined in the middle of his first round. The other guys went on though and it was interesting to watch the guys act and react to Nick and his style of fighting. Everyone did well and it was fun to watch.

09.03.05 - Saturday Training

New items today:

1. Pivots
2. Technique: Thrusting Release
3. Sparring Technique

Reviewed other items:

1. Kick: Roundhouse Kicks
2. Form: Orange Belt Form
3. ¼ Speed Sparring
4. General foot maneuvers
5. Technique: Thunder & Lightning
6. Technique: Escaping Ram

Marty J. Now a Regular Participant in Class
I met Marty for the first time during the last session I attended back in late July or early August. He had his infant son with him and he did not participate on that day. Marty is a first Dan black belt in Chinese Kenpo and wears a very positive attitude at all times. I enjoyed having him in class and receiving his recommendations.

Pivots
This seems like a common sense sort of thing but it was still good to practice it. We practiced a 90 &180 degree pivots in class, to the point that I was starting to get dizzy. The concept is simple enough: move your body around your lead foot to change positions without exposing targets. Doing so allows you to basically keep your neutral bow stance and maintain that balance of mobility and stability.

Technique: Thrusting Release
Although I had been introduced to this in Long Beach during the 2005 West Coast Kenpo Confederation, this is the first time that we had covered this in class. This technique defends against a front bear hug with arms pinned. I had some questions regarding this technique but Bill cleared them up for me during a lunchtime session last week. In class, we just went over the basics on this technique today and focused more on the other techniques than this one.

¼ Speed Sparring
While the sparring at this speed wasn’t new, Bill introduced me to something that was new during the session, a blue belt technique called Attacking Warrior. He started by showing me a leading back fist and then kept adding moves until I had the whole thing down. It was pretty cool, as I had been struggling with combining strikes in sparring and this gave me a little more dimension to consider.