02.04.06 - Saturday Training

New Items Today:

1. New Class Member: Elliot

Reviewed other items:

1. Warm ups
2. BKF Over/Under Drill
3. Techniques (Thunder & Lighting and Escaping Ram)
4. ¼ Speed Sparring
5. Orange Belt Form

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BKF Over/Under Drill
We have practiced this technique at least once before since I have been studying at TKI. This is a cool little drill in that it employs several principles, such as closing the distance, pinning & checking, hidden hand techniques, and point of origin striking. It isn’t as complicated as all of this sounds and that is really what makes it so effective.

It starts out by moving in and pinning down your partner’s lead hand with your lead hand, then striking forward with a lunge punch with the rear hand. The next move is to step to approximately 1:00 and turn the pinning hand into a low fist, striking from point of origin to the ribs as you are stepping through.
This is a little awkward at first but Sifu walked us through it a step at a time and it all came together nicely. My partner for this drill was Elliot, so I was able to work with “the new guy” right away. He is a 1st degree Black belt and trained under an instructor. He was a good partner for the exercise.

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¼ Speed Sparring
I had been looking forward to sparring for a couple of weeks now. Sifu had shown me a technique or concept he referred to as “moving up the circle” and this was the first opportunity I had to work it. As expected, I didn’t master it right away but when my turn to spar with Sifu came around, I was trying it out and he helped me to better understand. There were a few times that he guided me through some movements as he came in and showed how I could simply get out of the way of his strike by moving up the circle, regardless of whether I launched a counter strike or not. Good stuff.
I tried very hard to keep the speed down to ¼ speed. There were a couple of times I caught myself launching way too fast and slowed down in mid stride. The result was comical. By doing this, I had unintentionally thrown my sparring partner’s rhythm off and caused him to go on guard in a nearly fully defensive posture. My little “mistake” turned into something useful. Of course, this only lasted as long as it took him to figure out what I was doing, but it was still a good lesson.