2025-04-16

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

I have several students working on Tekki Shodan, so we spent some time correcting one of my real pet peeves in all three Tekki kata - poor understanding of the “signature move” - the two-handed combination that involves an upper level block and culminates with a backfist to the attacker’s face. The backfist is rarely a problem, but the block often is.

I’ve queued up a full post about this as well, but here’s the TL;DR version:

1. You’re supposed to be blocking with the back of the arm (haiwan), so the blocking arm must be oriented “palm in.”
2. It must block something. (If your arm never passes in front of your face, you’re not blocking anything.)

See below:

All too often I see the blocking arm oriented like a rising block, with the palm out. Likewise, although the blocking arm ends up to the side of the head, it can’t spend all of its time over there or it can’t actually block anything. Consider that you’re blocking a punch coming directly at your face. In order to intercept that punch, the block must cross in front of your face, just as a rising block does.