2022-04-25

2022-04-25, Monday

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

Three students came to the early class, and all are doing very well. We worked our way through the kihon we’ve done so far (choku-zuki, oi-zuki, age-uke, and gedan barai) before spending a good deal of time on outside block. I wrote last week about the three methods I use to teach outside block, and we went through all three of them again. Everyone seems to be coming along nicely, though I do have difficulty getting them to pull hikite back to the hip. For those having trouble, I find that standing right in front of them and acting as their mirror image helps. (i.e. Looking at themselves in the mirror doesn’t help if they don’t know how to do the technique in the first place, but standing in front of them and having them “mirror” your motion seems to help quite a bit.)

For the second half of class, we all went through Taikyoku Shodan a few times together before taking turns doing it individually. All three students wanted to give it a try without help, but all three still ended up needing some degree of assistance. Some only needed me to count and some needed a bit more instruction. Still, there was good progress, I expect everyone will be able to get through the kata without assistance in another month or so, and that may be a good opportunity to hold our first rank exam.

I an extra surprise at the end of class. Because this class is full of brand new beginners, I’ve been giving the “commands” to open and close class, including reciting the dojo kun (in English) for them to repeat. This time, one of the students started parroting the dojo kun along with me, and he almost got it all right! I was pretty impressed, and I think he may have it in another week or two.