2023-05-15

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

I had two yondans show up for the second class, in addition to the usual students, so I tailored the first half of class to challenge them with some different kihon. Then we went over the usual students’ katas before allowing the yondans to pick which kata they wanted to do together. They chose Meikyo and, just for fun, I had the other students follow along after the yondans demonstrated it once. Everyone seemed to enjoy that. Finally, we finished up with some yakusoku sanbon kumite in anticipation of next Wendesday’s kyu grading.

One of the things we talked about during kata training was spending more time thinking about the back foot. Oftentimes I find, when students finish a turn, their back foot ends up pointing off in some random direction. So I encourage my students to give more “love” to their back foot. In other words, I tell them that their front foot already knows where it’s supposed to go, so concentrating on where their back foot is supposed to go isn’t going to change that - it’s only going to improve their stance.

Take, for example, the 270° turn at the first kiai in Heian Shodan. Many students finish this turn with their front (left) foot in the right place, but they allow their back toes to “remain behind” pointing off in some direction other than the direction the student is facing. However, I’ve found that by having students concentrate on making sure their rear foot points in the right direction, everthing about the stance gets just a tiny bit better.