2023-04-10

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

Tonight the first class spent a lot of time on not “anchoring” to the room during kata. In other words, we started kata facing in different directions and even worked on it with our eyes closed. It’s strange, but starting in different directions tends to throw students off, but doing it with their eyes closed tends to be much easier, so I recommend doing it in this order:

1. Have students try their kata staring facing different directions, having each student face either forwards, backwards, “left”, or “right”. (Don’t have anyone face the corners just yet.) Try this several times in a row.
2. Next, have all students face “forward” but do the kata with their eyes closed. To keep things safe you should do this by the count (whatever count you use) and promise students that you won’t let them run into anything. Chances are good that some of them will open their eyes anyway, but that’s okay. Have them do this several times too.
3. Finally, ask them, “If you can do the kata with your eyes closed then, when your eyes are open, why does it matter which way you’re facing when you begin?” Then have them close their eyes again, grab each student by the shoulders, and turn them to face a random direction … and start counting.

For some reason, this works. Maybe it’s because they can’t get confused by visual cues when their eyes are closed. Maybe it’s because they really have to think about which way to go when they can’t see. Honestly, I don’t care as long as they “get it.”