2024-09-25

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

The adult class was small again last night, so we spent the entire class going around the room with each person picking a kata to work on. I made the lower ranks pick the kata they’re working on for their next exam, but I let 3rd kyu and up pick any kata they wanted. As a result, we ended up working on Heian Nidan through Heian Godan and Kanku Dai. The latter two were a bit of a stretch for the 8th kyu students, but they managed. We did each kata at least twice - once by count and once with no count - and those who’d never seen a kata before were welcome to sit out when we did it with no count. Along the way, I got some pretty good questions, which I’ll summarize here:

• Q: In Heian Sandan, what am I doing when I’m stomping down in kiba dachi?
  A: You’re stomping down on the top of the attacker’s foot to pin and crush his foot.
• Q: Why are we going slowly at the beginning of Heian Yondan?
  A: Two reasons: First, moving slowly makes a lack of hand/foot timing obvious (like a test). Second, slow moves generally imply grappling applications, and these two moves can be applied as both an escape from a cross-side wrist grab or a strike to the side of the head.
• Q: What are we doing in the last couple moves of Heian Godan?
  A: Looking at the last move, it’s a single-leg take-down (throw) where the left hand is grabbing the inside of the attacker’s knee while the right hand blocks a punch to the head. Then the left hand lifts the leg while the right hand drives the attacker’s head into the ground. 😈