2025-09-08

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

After class, one of the adult students showed me a video he’s been using to help work on his kata at home. He wanted me to see it because the person in the video does something very different with his left leg on the 12th move of Heian Nidan (right after the first kiai). Instead of the usual “compress-turn-expand” method of turning, he just sort of reached out behind himself with the leg and let that turn him around. I’m like this guy’s videos, in general, but I’m not a fan of the way this was demonstrated.

To be clear:

• I think it’s great that my students are interested enough to be watching videos, making note of differences, and asking me about them after class.
• My adult students know that there’s diversity in the way different schools perform the same kata. That’s often not “wrong”, just “different.”
• In these cases, I’ll generally say something like, “This is how I how I want you to do it, and why, but know that others do it this other way for thus-and-such reason”, etc.

But in this case, for the first time, I found myself saying, “Don’t do it that way.” I’m fairly sure the person in the video was exagerating the movement of the leg to make it clear where it was supposed to go, and I’ve even taught it that way if a student is having difficulty with the movement, but, when I exaggerate something for the sake of teaching, I try very hard to make sure I say so. Otherwise, students run the risk of thinking that’s really how it’s supposed to be done. So I’ll tell them, “Do this for now, just until you get the hang of it. Then we’ll take it from there and start doing it the way it’s really supposed to be done.