2023-03-20

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

I had two new students in my youth class tonight, but have recently learned that I’ll soon be losing one. It’s ebb and flow, I guess, but I’m happy to teach whoever shows up. The two “newbies” are brother and sister, ages 8 and 11, and both have clearly done some kind of martial arts before. That makes things a bit easier, but the younger sibling doesn’t speak much English. I’ve never (knowingly) had to work through a language barrier while teaching before, but that’ll just add to the challenge.

In the adult class, I had a good friend visit and train with us, and we hit the kihon pretty hard. Two things stood out and needed work, both coming from the venerable soto-uke, yoko empi-uchi, uraken, gyaku-zuki combination.

1. The backfist strike in this combination is often executed as though it’s sokumen uraken-uchi (along an almost vertical path as in Heian Sandan, but in this combination I think it ought to be executed on a horizontal plane, as yoko (or yoko-mawashi) uraken uchi. I think this is important because (and I have no scientific basis for this) the momentum of the returning arm along a horizontal plane just feels like it helps prime the rotation of the hip for gyaku-zuki.
2. The transition from the uraken-uchi in kiba-dachi back to zenkutsu-dachi for gyaku-zuki is challenging, because often there’s a feeling of pulling the lead foot back to make the change. I think this stems from most people’s habit of making kiba-dachi too wide. Both Nakayama’s “Dynamic Karate” and Okazaki’s “Textbook of Modern Karate” have zenkutsu-dachi, kokutsu-dachi, and kiba-dachi all at equal lengths. I frequenly have students check this by transitioning between these three stances without lifting their heels, and usually find that front stance and back stance are about right, but horse stance is way longer. Shortening it to the proper length results in not having to pull it back when transitioning from horse stance to front stance.