2023-12-11

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

The youth class has kyu gradings on Wednesday, so I asked the class if there was anything they wanted to be sure we worked on tonight, and we spent our time on that. About half the students wanted to work on kata and the other half wanted to work on yakusoku kumite, so that’s what we did.

Kata went about like you might expect. Students did kata, I critiqued, etc. Everyone had different issues to overcome, but a common theme among those performing Heian Shodan was the lack of “oomph” in their knife-hand blocks. I told them to think of knife-hand block like slapping something out of the way. You really have to generate some speed in order to have an effecive slap. That seemed to help.

When working on yakusoku kumite, I noticed a common issue with defenders waiting too long between the last attack and their counterattack. I explained that the feeling should be as though you simply can’t wait until it’s time your turn to counterattack. It’s as if you should be thinking, “Is it my turn yet? How about now? How about now?” If you wait too long, the attacker could just attack again. In other words, you aren’t counterattacking because that’s the end of the drill. You’re counterattacking because you want to end the attacks.