2023-06-28

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

Classes continue to be small in the weeks following the end of school, but I’ve started to get a few back from vacation. My youth class spent a good deal of time working on going faster in kata. Mechanically, their performance is where I’d want it to be for their level, but it lacks in terms of spirit, and part of it is their kiai, so we spent a lot of time working on that.

We played what I call “the banana game”, which I use to help kids practice being loud.

In the banana game, students form two lines in opposite corners of the room, as far from each other as possible. Let’s call them line 1 and line 2. Play proceeds like this:

• The person at the head of line 1 runs across the room and whispers a word to the head of line 2, then joins the end of line 2.
• The person at the head of line 2 shouts the word across the room to the new head of line 1.
• I ask the new head of line 1 what the word was.
  • If he/she is right, great.
  • If not, everyone does five push-ups (including me).
• Play proceeds with the head of line 2 runing over and whispering a word to the head of line 1, etc.

If there are plenty of kids in the room, the “side chatter” can get pretty noisy, making it even harder. If not, you can make it harder by playing music. The goal is for students to become comfortable shouting … something they’re generally discouraged from doing outside of karate.

Incidentally, I call it “the banana game” because I typically have the first person yell “bannana.”

The adult class continuted working on basic kumite movement and combinations. As mentioned last time, one partner would move forward with kizami-zuki, then gyaku-zuki, while the other would move back to block with nagashi-uke, then gedan-barai, before countering with a gyaku-zuki of their own. They’re starting to get the hang of it, but it’s still a very herky-jerky motion that I tell them should eventually smooth itself out, like swimming. Next we worked on kata, with two students working on a new kata for either the first or second time. Again, the motions were very herky-jerky, but again … that comes from lack of familiarity and will smooth itself out over time.