2024-07-30
Subbing for ISKF Tempe at the Tempe Family YMCA.
I’ve been pretty bad about updating my diary when I sub for others, but last night was a little different so I thought it was worth mentioning. A lot of students were trying to add some variety to their yakusoku kumite by counterattacking with elbows, ridge hands, and knife hands, instead of the usual reverse punch. Unfortunately, the execution betrayed a lack of understanding of distance and course of technique.
When I talk about distance in terms of karate, I break it down into five different “ranges.” From longest to shortest they are:
- Shouting distance (“Hey, stay back! I don’t want any trouble.)
- Kicking distance
- Punching distance (This includes “full length” arm techniques like haito-uchi.)
- Striking distance (This is where elbows come in.)
- Grappling distance
After we understand where these distances start, end, and occasionally overlap, need to make sure we have tools in our toolbox to address attackers at each range. But that’s not all …
We also need to be able to apply those techniques in a way that puts the hurt on our attacker without injuring ourselves. That takes practice, so we broke out some hand-held pads and spent about 15 minutes pounding on each other with elbows and ridge-hands and whatnot. TL;DR: We got better at actually hitting things by … (wait for it) … actually hitting things.
