2022-03-19
2022-03-19, Saturday
Subbing for ISKF Tempe at the Tempe Family YMCA.
The regular instructor was back from vacation, but suffering from a touch of jetlag, and asked me to teach anyway. We had about nine people in class, which is a good turnout for that group. We warmed up with mixed-level kihon (beginners do rising block, kyu grades do rising block/reverse punch, dan grades to rising block/front-leg front kick/reverse punch, etc.) for about 20 or 25 minutes before moving on to kata.
The beginners were having a lot of difficulting turning far enough to land with sufficient stance width after the 180° turn in Taikyoku Shodan ("Kihon" Kata). This is common - beginners often don’t rotate far enough and land, at best, in a straight line stance. To fix this, I have them imagine a line from their front heel to their back heel and then have them imagine continuing that line behind themselves. Then, when they turn, I tell them they have to turn far enough to put their heel on that imaginary line. If this doesn’t work, you can actually put lines on the floor using painter’s tape, a piece of string, or even a spare belt. Then we turn - again, and again, and again - until they can do it without looking down.
The beginners were dismissed with 30 minutes to go, and the balance of the class was reserved for dan grades, where we continued to work on Heian Sandan, Jion, and Sochin. Heian Sandan is coming along nicely. There was a bit of variance in the orientation of the fist on the last two moves, but folks have been taught to do this differently over the years. I was taught to do this with the palm facing the shoulder, but I know at least two senior instructors who make a case for orienting the back of the fist towards the face. However, in neither case should the elbow be held parallel to the floor - it needs to stay pointing down, as if guarding the solar plexus.
In Jion, we worked on the part, about 3/4 of the way through the kata, where the uraken/tsuki-uke/uraken combination leads into the 270° turn before uchi-uke, etc. I find this part seems to “lumber” for a lot of people. The combination before the turn is fast, primarily because you don’t have to move your legs, but then the turn is slow and labored, taking almost twice as long as it needs to. To fix this, I teach a drill where the preceeding combination doesn’t end with the second uraken-uchi - it ends with the turning uchi-uke. So, starting from the jodan juji-uke, it’s not a 3-count combination ending with uraken-uchi, it’s a 4 count combination ending with the turning uchi-uke. By incorporating the turning block into an otherwise fast combination, students tend to turn faster … which is the goal.
