2024-07-24

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

“Contact” is tricky, and it’s often difficult to get students to hit each other. After all, we live in an age where “hitting is wrong” and “violence is never the answer.” Those are fine rules for polite society, but if you genuinely need to defend yourself, you need to be able to hit. The only way to be good at hitting things is to practice hitting things, which means being able to overcome the “polite society” programming while you’re in class.

So how do you practice that? I often tell students that they should try to hit the uniform without hitting the person inside. Once they can do that consistently, then they can “dial up” the contact if necessary, and depending on the partner. I say “depending on the partner” because I don’t want a 40-year-old pipefitter putting his fist through a 9-year-old, but I typically do want my students to give the black belts (including me) a good whack.