2022-03-23
2022-03-23, Wednesday
Teaching my regular classes at the Ross Farnsworth - East Valley YMCA.
Last night’s youth class was great! Everyone showed up and we even got a new student - record attendance! We worked on the basics (no shock there) starting with making a fist, then choku-zuki, then making zenkutsu dachi, then moving across the floor, and finally putting it all together to make oi-zuki. Everyone appeared to have a great time - high fives all around!
A note on class composition: The first class is billed as “youth”, but we’re considering changing it to “youth & family”, meaning parents would be allowed to train with their children. To be clear, adults couldn’t train in this class unless they also have a child in the class. (i.e. No solo adults in the “youth & family” class.)
The adult class had two attendees, a white belt and a black belt. The white belt was a bit late to class, so the black belt and I went over some of the applications we’ve been working on in both classes for the past several weeks. Once the white belt joined we went over the same basics we did in the youth class, but added soto ude-uke to the mix.
With only two in class, it’s easy to shift focus according to the students’ needs, so we ended up doing a partner drill similar to yakusoku kumite, but standing in place. Partners stand face to face, at punching range. Partner 1 extends a punch at jodan level while partner 2 executes a rising block, then partner 1 begins alternating punches, all to jodan level, at a slow and predictable pace, while partner 2 just practices receiving those punches with age-uke, stressing timing, wrist-to-wrist contact, and keeping the body rotating along a vertical axis.
We then did the same drill with soto ude-uke, but this required a bit more correction. A common tendency among beginners is to execute this block in a way that drives the attack down and to the side, rather than just to the side. After all, the arm starts up to the side of the head, and you bring it down across the body, so shouldn’t the resulting block drive the attack down and to the side? No … not exactly. To fix this, we altered the drill so the “defender” just stands there with both arms up, as though both arms had just finished soto ude-uke. (Think of Jion just before the ryoken jodan juji-uke.) As the attacker begins punching, the defender blocks without moving his arms, simply by rotating his upper torso left and right, isolating the blocking motion along a horizontal plane. Once the defender is comfortable with this, he can add the “wind up” motion of moving the blocking arm up to the side of his head.
