Brilliant lesson tonight. Didn’t make last weeks so had really been looking forward to it. Everybody was doing the extra half hour so we just went straight through for 90+ minutes.
After the warm up stretches etc we moved onto crescent kicks over a partners out held arms. Then some more advanced stretches to push things further.
Then straight onto pad work, doing 5 jabs followed by 5 jab punches then swapping so the partner could have a go. Then we did jab, punch, hook, uppercut 5 times on each side then swapped. This was then followed by push ups. We do push ups to mirror the movements of the punches. So, arms straight at the side elbows pointing back for straight punches. Push ups with elbows bent out with wider hands for hooks and hands reversed for uppercuts. Very hard. All should really be done on knuckles but this needs to be built up to.
We then put these punches into practice with some drills using different blocks including some interesting new ones. This was turning into quite an intense work out! We followed this with a bit of open hand sparring. Practicing foot work and blocking whilst trying to palm strike your opponents shoulders.
The final twenty minutes was devoted to pattern practice and White Crane Tai Chi. I am going to Tai Chi Camp this weekend which will be an amazing opportunity to learn with the groups chief instructor. Fingers crossed the weather brightens up!
