2022-03-09

2022-03-09, Wednesday

Teaching my regular classes at the Ross Farnsworth - East Valley YMCA.

Tonight I had a brand-new 8-year-old beginner perform gedan barai correctly the very first time I showed it to him. I’ve been teaching a long time now, and I’ve never had that happen before. It usually takes several tries, and several different ways of explaining it, but this student just caught on right away, so that was a good feeling. I taught it by concentrating on the arms alone, while standing in front of the mirror, and using my usual imagary of one hand sliding down the opposite arm from the preparatory position on the shoulder to its final blocking position, parallel to the other arm.

In the adult class, we went over applications from the Tekki kata. We began by using the first two moves of Tekki Shodan as a same-side wrist grab escape and throw (what an Aikidoka would recognize as kokyu nage) before continuing on to the yoko-mawashi empi uchi, etc., if that doesn’t work.

Next we worked on using moves 3 and 4 from Tekki Nidan (the low, inward “scooping” forearm block and return) to defend against a cross-side kick, very similar to the scooping block before the dropping punch near the end of Kanku Dai. Yes, that leaves you very close if things go south, but Tekki are close-fighting katas, and that’s why we practice.