Burn With Us

At my karate dojo, our Tuesday night advanced class is rather intimate (read “small”), so our sensei has turned it into more of an intense workout class than an educational class. This helps boost the attendance a bit those nights, gives the attendees a little more advanced instruction, and most importantly gives us a really intense workout to up our general fitness level. Given I leave those classes sweaty and sore, I thought I’d give you an insight into what those classes are like.

Keep in mind, this is the third class of the evening and I’ll typically attend all three. Basic class, which is predominantly white belts, isn’t too tough, and generally amounts to a warm-up for the more advanced students in attendance (most of us attend to help with instruction). We do 10-20 push-ups or 50 or so snap kicks, then work simple punching and kicking drills and maybe a Taikyoku punching exercise.

The next class is aimed at yellow, blue, and green belts. We typically do 20 push-ups and/or crunches, or we do as many as 100 snap kicks. The push-ups are often what I call slow push-ups, where we lower ourselves, hold it for a second, then come back up. We run a lot of kata in this class, and in Shuri-ryu, if you’re running your kata correctly and with power, one kata should leave you out of breath. We run our kata at least three times, then move on to learning and practicing our other techniques. On Thursdays we sometimes include kobudo (weapons) or sparring training and tack a half hour onto the end of the night for sparring. Tonight we did a lot of wazas in yellow/blue/green class, which are combinations of techniques. I ended up working up a good sweat before the advanced class.

Which brings me to the advanced class itself. Advanced class is normally intended for purple belts and above (our style goes purple, three levels of brown, and then black), but our dojo is the smallest of the Academy of Okinawan Karate schools and we don’t have a lot of purple or brown belts. So, again, it’s opened up to be more of a workout.

Here’s a breakdown of a typical class:

Tension Kata – A tension kata is simply a kata run with muscle tension. Think of it like a yoga or tai chi routine, only we also tense every muscle in our body and include a breathing exercise with each technique. Purple and brown belts have specific tension katas such as Sanchin, but the rest of us will turn one of our own katas into a tension kata. If a regular kata wears you out, a tension kata nearly destroys you, but it does great things for your breathing and strength.

Push-Ups – Lots and lots of push-ups. We might do ladders, where we bend over, touch the floor, crawl out to push-up position, do the push-up, and reverse back to a standing position. We might do “spider” push-ups, where we have our feet wide instead of together. We might do knuckle push-ups or (try) fingertip push-ups. Tonight, we did a few different kinds: Japanese push-ups, where we bend over and touch the floor, then dip down low as if crawling under a fence and return; Swiss ball push-ups, which, as the name suggests, are done on a Swiss ball (these really challenge your core for balance); dumbbell push-ups, which look a lot like dumbbell arm curls only you’re pressing the dumbbells to the floor and doing a push-up rather than standing (hell on your delts); and triangle push-ups, which is simply putting our hands together to make a triangle (hell on your forearms) for the push-up.

Abdominal Exercises – Typically sit-ups (aka curl-ups) or crunches, but we’ve done sit-ups where we start from the usual position and have a partner hold our lower legs, then we do the sit-up and keep going until we’re standing. (I’ve done 3 on a good night.) Tonight we got off the hook.

Kicking – At least 100 when we do front kicks, facing the mirror so we know all 100 go higher than our belts. Tonight we did about 70 side kicks.

Stretching – We practice a lot of kiba dachi, or horse stance. In our style, we shoot for nice, low stances, so the goal is to bend the knees and get the thighs parallel to the ground. Tonight, we held that stance for 30 seconds at the close of our tension kata. Then we did the frog, where we get down in our lowest horse stance, hold our ankles, shove our knees out with our elbows, and hold for 30 seconds. Finally, we did a round of stretching on the stretching machine.

Techniques/Instruction – We do still work in some instruction. Tonight, more concentration on ippons and taezus, which are combinations of techniques. Sweat, sweat, sweat.

Cram all that into an hour and it goes pretty quick. I find myself wishing the clock would move even faster while I’m in class, but after we bow off I always feel great (if exhausted and sore) and I’m glad I stick around.

That’s the great thing about the martial arts: if you find a good school, it’s like getting a combination gym membership and education. Once you get through the white belt material, things really open up and it provides a lot of variety in both your in-class and home workouts. It’s a lot more fun than pushing heavy things into the air over and over or hiding out in the garage with the weight machine.