For the past 2 weeks, we've focused on kime - relaxing throughout the technique and tensing and relaxing instantaneous at the end. We've been focusing on your upper body and our techniques - age uke, soto uke, gedan barai and choku zuki. Today, we turned our attention to the lower body, our hips, legs and stances.
We primarily focused on zenkutsu dachi (front stance). The feet should be should width apart and two shoulder widths long with 60% of your weight on the front leg.
We practiced stepping both forwards and backwards, tensing at the end of the step to achieve kime. We tense our whole body - legs, arms, chest and back, even though we were not performing a technique.
This is challenging and feels weak - we must practices this until it is strong. If feels much stronger when performing techniques because we are using too much of our upper body.
We practiced straightening the rear leg to drive us forward. This is how we use the floor to generate power.
We started learning about hip rotation. There are two hip positions:
We practiced both of these positions stepping forward, stepping back and transitioning between the two in place. We will continue to practice this in future, as it is a fundamental part of Shotokan Karate, and one of the key methods of generating power by using the floor.
We finished the session performing some basic kata.