2025-08-13

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

We’ve been working on one-time attack/defense drills with the following eight attacks: oi-zuki jodan, oi-zuki chudan, kizami-zuki jodan, gyaku-zuki chudan, mai-geri keage chudan, mawashi-geri chudan, yoko-geri kekomi chudan, and ushiro-geri chudan.

Recently, instead of doing them “in place”, I’ve been having the attacker drive the defender back on each attack and then continue with the next attack from there, so students are slowly moving across the floor. Most recently, I’ve been having them do the right-side and left-side version of each attack back-to-back. (e.g. Right side lunge punch to the face, then left side, then right side lunge punch to the body, then left side, etc.). This has them moving across the floor together, working on almost continuous attacks and defenses, with both sides of the body.

Tonight we added something new. I told students take the speed down to 60% and do two techniques from that list in a row, unannounced, with the defender countering after the second one. We did that a couple of times before ramping it up to three techniques. The goal, of course, is to have students be able to defend against any number of unannounced techniques, countering when possible.