Kakie/Muchimi-di, Combat Conditioning and a Seminar

This morning I went to the dojo to teach the Family Class and the Specialty Class (this month the theme is "combat conditioning") before heading over to Peoria, AZ for a kata application seminar taught by Vince Morris (Hachidan and founder of Kissaki-Kai). This post will be about the classes, and I will make a separate post about the seminar.

 

Video demonstrating Goju-Ryu kakie drills (2:50 shows the one I started with)

In the Family Class, after getting everyone warmed up, I had them get with a partner and work some simple kakie (hooking hands) and muchimi-di (sticking hands) drills. First, I had them press the insides of their wrists together and practice hooking and pulling from that position, then rotating around to the outside of the arm (with the wrists touching the entire time) and hooking and pulling from there. This is a simple, very common kakie drill, but one that most of them hadn't ever done. From there, I moved on to having them work the same idea from outside and inside middle blocks, so they would both execute the block so that their forearms hit each other, then they would hook and pull. After that, I moved on to having them work the same idea from strikes, so I had them strike at head level with shuto-uchi (sword hand strike) and haito-uchi (ridge hand strike) so that their forearms hit in the middle and hook and pull from there.

Finally, after working our way up to it, I had them work this concept into countering an attacker. Initially, I simply had them strike at the pad holder's head, which the pad holder would block, and then they had to hook and pull the block out of the way to strike the pad. After that, I had the pad holder punch at the defender, who had to block, hook and pull to strike the pad. All-in-all, I was very pleased with everyone's progress in that class, since these are very useful drills but can be a little difficult to pick up.

Not someone from our dojo, but it is someone in a gi flipping a tire

The second class bowed on and did a short warm up before I started them on 45 second circuits, which we would do for all but the last 5 minutes of class. These circuits changed after everyone had been through the rotation once, so we got a lot of different combat conditioning exercises in. The exercises included (I may leave some out by accident) lunges with punches, bridges, shadowboxing, burpees, plyometric pushups, medicine ball pushups, medicine ball slams, situps, kettlebell lifts, bagwork, dips, pull-ups, end-grip bo swings (didn't have chii-ishi, so this was my substitute), heavy bag drags and heavy bag flips. Finally, for the last five minutes, I let the kids flip tractor tires outside in the rain, which they apparently LOVED doing :P.