2022-07-20

2022-07-20, Wednesday

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

We spent a lot of time on kata in tonight’s youth class. I put the students in a line with the new student in the middle so he had someone to watch no matter which way we were going, and then I simply talked through it. The more experienced students were jumping the gun a bit when it came to my count, because they probably didn’t need all of the verbal assistance I was giving to the newcomer, but if nothing else it helped to drive home some vocabulary. At the same time, the new student was probably struggling to keep up a bit, but had two visual examples to work with and my own verbal descriptions. This worked really well, and kept everyone just outside their own “comfort zone”, which is essential for growth no matter what.

After a few rounds of that, I had the newcomer sit down and watch while the two more experienced beginners ran through the kata without assistance. Importantly, however, I gave the new student a job to do. I had him watch both other students and make sure they only used one foot at a time, and used both hands on every technique. If you just have students sit there, without giving them a job, they tend to devolve into chit-chat, or other distractions, so it’s important to keep them involved in some way.

The adult class had only one student, so we worked on some “non-standard” stuff. We started with familar kihon, but soon branched into some line drills involving shuto uchi, haito uchi, and the various flavors of empi uchi … things that don’t come up that often in the “marching up and down the floor” portion of class. From there, we took those same drills and turned them into impact exercises, because we all know there’s a huge difference between “striking air” and striking something that provides resistance. Finally, we worked on some applications for the opening sequence of Bassai Sho.