2022-05-23
2022-05-23, Monday
Teaching my regular classes at the Ross Farnsworth - East Valley YMCA.
Last night’s classes were great! The first class had three students, two of whom I’m planning to test for 9th kyu on Wednesday, so we spent our time going over the test material: kihon, kata, kumite, vocabulary, and a couple of fitness items. Everything but the kata is spot on at this point, and I think both of them will do just fine if they can shake the “jitters.” If I had to nitpick their kihon, I’d say that the two young men getting ready to test both tend to make their stance too long. Adults tend to make their stances to short, but children make them too long, trying to “race” to get to the other side of the room. The problem, of course, is that they can’t move without either moving their foot (which wastes time), or destoying their posture.
The young lady who joined class a few weeks ago is doing very, very well. I just need to figure out how to get her to dial up her aggression just a notch. For instance, she knows kiai is mandatory, but she’s having trouble breaking out of what appears to be a bit of a timid shell. We’ll get there.
The second class had three black belts in attendance, so we hit it hard, interspersing kata and kihon for the first hour. We started with Heain Godan, and spent a good deal of time talking about the relationship between the back toes and the back knee in kokutsu dachi. Sometimes people will “buckle” the back knee forward, but having the back knee a smidge forward is fine as long as the back toes are too. Like zenkutsu dachi, the knee needs to be over the toes … wherever they are.
In Hangetsu, we discussed keeping the arms close to your sides when doing the uchi uke/gedan uke combinations after the first kiai. Many people let their arms flare out away from their bodies, but the arm postiion should be the same as if you were doing “normal” uchi uke and gedan barai - just like the double blocks near the beginning of Heian Sandan.
In Nijushiho, we worked on smoothing things out a bit. I called it “dialing the Shotokan back to about 8.” In kata with slower moves, like Hangetsu and Nijushiho, we have a tendency to “make kime” (though not really) at the end of slow techniques by adding a bit of a herky-jerkiness to the stop. It’s unnecessary and ruins the fluidity of movements that are supposed to show a more graceful kind of power. This is particularly true in Nijushiho, where we flip back and forth between “hard” and “soft” elements every couple of moves.
