2022-08-29

2022-08-29, Monday

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

We spent a loooong time on vocabulary in the youth class tonight, and a few students are having trouble. Amazingly, I’ve got a student who can recite the dojo kun, and can remember to say “oi-zuki, jodan” before yakusoku kumite, but can’t remember that “tsuki” is the word for “punch.” I’m not blaming the student - I just need to find a better way to teach this stuff. I’ve put together a glossary, but I don’t expect my 6-year-old students to be pouring over it online. I’m very interested to hear what techniques others use to teach vocabulary.

In the adult class, we went through a round of kihon drills before moving on to application work. Over the weekend, in my Aikido class, we started working on yokomen uchi ikkyo and I was struck by the similarity between the opening of this technique and the first two moves of Heian Yondan. We spent quite a bit of time playing with that, and it was well-received.