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.