2025-04-07

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

Tonight’s adult class was entirely kata. We went through the first 7: Taikyoku Shodan through Tekki Shodan. Some of those were beyond particular students’ “pay grade” and some weren’t going to be on anyone’s next test, but I think there’s value in giving everyone at least a passing familiarity with all of them, and everyone learned something along the way.

Perhaps the most important lesson was that kata (like karate, itself) is more like math than history. The kata are learned in this order for a reason. You spend three katas learning how to pivot 270° before stepping into front stance so that, by the time you make it to Heian Sandan, you’re ready to pivot 270° before stepping into kiba-dachi, etc. Likewise, you learn how to pivot out of kosa-dachi in Heian Yondan so that you can apply that same footwork with much more difficult upper body techniques at the end of Heian Godan.

The last half of the class was a very specific instance of this same lesson. We took the hammerfist strike from Heian Shodan and applied it as an unbalancing technique. Then we took that same application and applied it to the first move of Tekki Shodan. Different kata … different stance … different approach angle … but with a similar result and position that makes it much more difficult for the attacker to counter.