2023-03-22

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

The two newcomers who attended on Monday night showed up again, so I think I may have won them over. That’s good. Small classes are great, but I also think classes can be too small. At a certain point, you need variety in training partners. Regardless, it looks like the youth class is picking up steam, and I’m happy for it.

The adult class spent a lot of time on back-and-forth punching and blocking drills, very similar to yakusoku kumite, but not quite, because this drill has no final counterattack. Rather, the attacker and defender just switch roles and immediately go back in the other direction. The drill goes like this:

• Attacker performs oi-zuki, jodan while the defender steps back with age-uke.
• Attacker performs oi-zuki, chudan while the defender steps back with soto-uke.
• Attacker performs oi-zuki, chudan (again) while the defender steps back with uchi-uke.
• Attacker performs mae-geri keage, chudan_ while the defender steps back with gedan-barai.
• Attacker performs oi-zuki, jodan while the defender steps diagonally back to the inside with age-uke, then resets in front of the attacker for the next count.
• Attacker performs oi-zuki, chudan while the defender steps diagonally back to the outside with shuto-uke (in kokutsu-dachi), then resets in front of the attacker for the next count.

I counted everything for tonight, but the goal is for students to eventually be able to transition from technique to technique, and from one direction to the other, without being prompted.

Because tonight was their first attempt with this drill, I wanted them to concern themselves with learning how each block “works.” For example, I find that uchi-uke and soto-uke work equally well against chudan attacks from an attacker of equal or greater height, but against shorter attackers uchi-uke is more challenging. At a certain point, even gedan-barai becomes preferable.