2023-04-03

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

I taught an important lesson in the youth class today. It’s okay (and necessary) to look at other people when you’re just learning a kata, but once you can get through it on your own, you need to stop looking at other people. Otherwise, their mistakes become your mistakes. I explained this, but it clearly wasn’t sinking in, because several students kept watchign others and making mistakes when I knew they knew better. To fix this, I stood in front of the class and told them we were all going to do Taikyoku Shodan together, by the count. Then I started counting and intentionally making mistakes in my kata performance. I turned the wrong way, I blocked when I should be punching, etc. Sure enough, half the class (all of whom can get through the kata on their own) mimicked my mistakes. Ha! Gotcha! We talked about it again, and this time they understood. So to build their confidence we spent the second half of the class going through the kata individually (so there was no one to watch).

In the second class, we spent some extra time on moving backwards with block-counter combinations, particularly soto-uke/gyaku-zuki. The junior students were having some difficulty coordinating the preparation of their block with their backwards motion - essentially moving the arm before starting to move the body. This particular combination was a good exaple of how moving the arm actually helps to move the body. Many people tend to break posture when moving backwards, going “butt first”, but pulling the arm into the preparatory position for soto-uke actually helps fix this issue as it tends to propel the upper torso backwards. To put that another way, rather than thinking about the combination as two separate things (moving backwards and blocking), it helps to think of tying the hip and elbow together into one motion (moving backwards while blocking).

I reminded students that I’ll be on vacation after next week, until mid-May, and my good friend Sensei Dave Bracklow from ISKF Tempe will be covering my classes while I’m away. I also reminded everyone that our next round of kyu gradings will be held on May 22, a couple of weeks after I return.