2025-03-27

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

Most of tonight’s adult class was spent going over kata. We did each kata at least three times, at different speeds: slow, “normal”, and fast.

When we did each kata slowly, I asked students to go so slowly that each move lasted five seconds (counting “one-thousand one, one-thousand two, etc., to help slow things down.) When we got done, I asked them what they learned. Someone started with, “Going slow is really hard!”, but I asked why … what made it hard? We settled on two things: Balance and timing.

It’s easy to gloss over problems with balance and timing when you’re moving fast. The less time there is between picking up a foot and putting it back down, the less time there is to lose your balance. By forcing students to go very, very slowly, they’re forced to concentrate on keeping their center of gravity over their base at all times.

Likewise, everything is supposed to stop moving at the same time, but it’s easy to make it look like that’s the case when you’re moving fast. When you move slowly, it’s harder to disguise the fact that your hands are done before your hip is, etc. (This is one of the reasons the first two moves in Heian Yondan is so difficult.)

Moving at normal speed is easy, right? It’s what you “normally” do. There isn’t much to say about it since it was just a stepping stone on the way to the next iteration.

The third iteration of each kata was “fast”, but but not the way you might think. I told students I wanted the individual techniques to be fast, but I still wanted there to be pauses with relaxation between the techniques. I counted it for them once, demonstrating the length of pauses that I wanted them to maintain between techniques, then had them do it once on their own like that. Then I hit them with it: Why wouldn’t you go that fast all the time? Why isn’t that your “normal” speed? I suggested that their “normal” speed should be much closer to this version.