2025-09-24

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

Working on Heian Godan tonight, I had another great question. It wasn’t asked quite like this, but explaining it this way will make it easier to understand…

Looking at the first two moves of Heian Godan, the distance doesn’t quite seem to work. If you step to the left to intercept an incoming attack with uchi-uke in back stance, with wrist-to-wrist contact, then stay in back stance to do a right-handed reverse-punch, that punch doesn’t even reach the point where your block intercepted the attacker’s arm, much less the attacker who (by definition) is arm’s length behind that. How does that work?

Angles, my friend, angles.

You know how you step off at an angle when defending on the last repetition of pre-arranged sparring? You do that because, if you were to step straight back, your reverse punch wouldn’t be able to reach the attacker. That’s what you’re doing at the beginning of Heian Godan too. If you assume your inside block is meeting the attacker straight on, then you’re right, the reverse punch won’t reach. But if you assume that you’re meeting the attack at an angle, and then using hikite to pull the attacker into your punch, you absolutely will.

Remember, turning to the side in kata does not mean the bad guy is over there when you begin the move. It means he’s there by the time you finish the move. Thus, a turn to the left doesn’t necessarily mean you turn to the left. It means you need to put the bad guy on your left, which means you probably moved to the right, facing left. Continuing with this first move of Heian Godan as our example, try moving to the right facing left, as you do in the first move of Kanku Sho.

I’ll be in Illinois next week for work, and to visit friends and family, so big thanks to Sensei Barry O’Brien for teaching my classes in my absence.