2025-11-19

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

Our sparring drills are progressing nicely, but tonight I had to have “the talk” about staying low. It’s part of our primate genes to “puff ourselves up” and try to look big when we feel threatened, but the taller you stand, the shorter your stance, which is antethetical to Shotokan style karate. Rather than “get tall” to try to match a larger attacker, it’s best to stay low, stable, with a long stance you can use to drive techniques into the target. It’s not easy to overcome this “hard wiring”, but training ourselves to do this gives us yet another advantage over an untrained attacker.

As a reminder, there will be no youth class on NOV 24 and no classes at all on NOV 26. Enjoy Thanksgiving, everyone.