2024-09-30

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

Tonight we ran what I think I’m going to call the “kata gauntlet.” Everyone spread out and then we alternated between everyone doing their own kata and everyone doing the “lowest” kata we hadn’t already all done together.

I realize that may be hard to follow so, to say that another way, the “rounds” went like this:

1. Everyone did their own kata.
2. Everyone did Taikyoku Shodan.
3. Everyone did their own kata.
4. Everyone did Heian Shodan.
   etc.

This seems to strike a balance between giving everyone the chance to work on their own kata while still having time to ease people into learning new kata.

On the even rounds, when doing the kata that everyone could get through, we did them with no count. When we got to kata that people couldn’t get through on their own, we did them twice: Once with a count, with upper rank on the edges where everyone could see them, and once with no count, where lower rank were encouraged to “tough it out.”