JKD Blog 9 - Outside Again — Myriad Misadventures

Outside classes are always cool. After normal warm ups we started with a low, sort of defensive, side kick into a backfist. After practicing it a little we did it as a drill with a person in the middle who had to react. As always I struggled with side kicking focus mitts. I’m used to, and competent at, side kicking bigger pads but not small ones. Small ones I just miss entirely. So lots of whiffing during this drill.

Then we rolled that into a drill where different people had different attacks to do and the person in the middle had different defenses, instead of doing the low side kick and backfist to everyone. This was a fun drill. By making each person have a different attack and associated defense it made the drill more dynamic than having the same attack and defense with everyone. It was a great step up from having everyone do the same attack. I’d love to see a next step where each person can do any of the attacks to make it even more dynamic.

After all those drills we wrapped up class with some instep kick practice. Maybe because we didn’t do them well enough during the earlier drill? And I actually had some trouble with them. I’m used to being told to throw my arm down on roundhouse kicks. Personally I don’t think the extra bit of power is worth the loss of head coverage but I understand the concept and how to do it. But I was told to throw my arm down on the instep kicks in class and I just couldn’t get it. It seemed to be a very unnatural movement to me and I couldn’t quite figure out how to do it.

Here’s hoping for a more dynamic version of that drill and more outside classes.

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