2022-03-27

2022-03-27, Monday

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

As mentioned last time, we’ve decided to go with the “Youth & Family” concept for the first class, with parents allowed to enroll with their children. In fact, we’ve already had a dad sign up to join his 7-year-old son. I’ll probably also have one of the students in the second (adult) class transfer to the first class to train with his son.

The first class began with two students, but a latecomer joined a few minutes after warm-up exercises. Class went well, and we got through a review of all the kihon we’d worked on so far: choku-zuki, zenkutsu-dachi, oi-zuki, age-uke, and gedan-barai. With the balance of our time, we worked on the first half of Taikyoku Shodan. As expected, moves 3 and 5 were difficult, because people are accustomed to alternating hands and feet as they move and both of those moves require stepping with the same foot, and blocking with the same hand, as the previous move. I find myself saying, “Pick up your front foot. No … your other front foot.” To fix this, I have them tap their front foot first. I’ll say, “Pick up your front foot and tap, tap, tap it on the ground so I can see which one it is!” Then, once everyone’s front feet are tapping, we all move together. After we successfully made our way to the first kiai, we called it a day on kata and finished class by practicing our balance - standing on one leg with the knee pointed forward, as if preparing for mae-geri keage … (because we are).