2022-08-10

2022-08-10, Wednesday

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

Youth class went very well today, and I’m sure the young lady who’s testing next Wednesday will do very well. Her kata performance can be described as “accurate but safe”, so I’ve told her that I need her to work on her confidence and speed things up a bit. We only get better if we push ourselves, so I need her to push herself just outside of her comfort zone. The newest student is doing very well with kata as well, able to follow along when given verbal instructions.

The adult class is getting into its own groove. After warm-up exercises we use a fitness tube as a target for impact practice with gyaku zuki, mae geri keage, and mawashi geri. It has almost the perfect amount of “give” to be a solid target without being too solid. One person holds it upright, with one end resting on the ground, while the other person puts techniques on the target. As a side note, yoga blocks work great as hand-held punching targets, but in my experience they’re too small to be safe for kicking drills. After that we move on to partner-supported yoko geri and ushiro geri practice, where partners hold hands and each partner practices placing techniques on the other partner.