2025-05-14

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

In tonight’s adult class we continued with the progressive sparring drills I’ve written about the last couple of times before moving on to kata. We worked quite a bit on Heian Sandan and Heian Yondan. In particular:

• In Heian Sandan, the three elbow blocks executed from kiba-dachi while moving southward. The main points here are rotating the blocking side just a bit forward so the block clears the body and leaves a gap for the counter attack.
• Also in Heian Sandan, the counter-clockwise spin into kiba-dachi on the second-to-last move of the kata. The key point here is to keep the hands still until you settle into stance.
• In Heian Yondan, generating power with the elbow strikes. From the armpits down, it’s exactly the same as gyaku-zuki and power is generated the same way.
• Also in Heian Yondan, generating power with the jodan shuto soto mawashi uchi just after the second elbow strike. Here the key is to extend the arm as it circles toward the target, not before.

After all the “practical” training, we talked a bit about how kata are the “textbooks” of karate, and how they teach not just techniques, but principles. For example, while the first few kata concentrate on generating power by moving the hips on a plane parallel with the floor, Heian Sandan teaches how to generate power through rotating and lifting the hips.