2023-05-17

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

One of my youngest students wore a uniform for the first time today, and it made a big difference. (He’d been wearing workout clothing before now.) There is something magical about putting on a karate gi, and this young man found it tonight. He was faster, sharper, and looked like he “belonged” in class. I don’t require students to purchase a uniform, but I do tell them they can’t wear a belt without a uniform, so most students end up purchasing one no later than their first grading. Still, I find it remarkable how much of a difference it makes.

In the second class, we went immediately from warm-up exercises into yakusoku sanbon kumite, and covered a lot of ground. In short, it’s the attacker’s job to set the initial distance appropriately, and it’s the defender’s job to avoid getting hit, which may mean adjusting that distance or being “creative” with your footwork to accomodate different attackers. To put that another way, if the defender is too close, that’s the defender’s problem. The attacker shouldn’t alter his/her distance to “be nice.” Similarly, if the defender is too far away, that’s also the defender’s problem. Learning to block effectively requires one to become comfortable in the “danger zone”, where you can actually be hit. I often tell my students, if you have to reach for an attack to block it, then it wasn’t going to hit you in the first place.