2026-04-06

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

Hitting from a stable platform is ideal, but self-defense scenarios are predicated on the “ideal” ship already having sailed. Nevertheless, when we train the “ideal”, and make it as powerful as possible, so that when less-than-ideal circumstances limit us, what we have left is as good as it can be. This comes up in many ways during a simple drill like yakusoku ippon kumite, but one of them is the timing of your evasive step as you block. Ideally, you’re going to step and block simultaneously and then counterattack. (Yes, Motubu would say I should do both at the same time, but let’s leave that for another day.) However, what I often see students do is a block in place followed by a simultaneous evasive step and counterattack. In other words, they step during the counter instead of stepping during the block … and I don’t like it.

As I said at the beginning, hitting from a stable platform is ideal. When you go to the range, or even the basketball court, you don’t shoot from a moving platform because motion degrades accuracy and consistency. Furthermore, in melee combat, your ability to exert force on the target depends on your ability to push against the floor, also known as “ground force transfer.” It’s limited, partly because friction depends on the relative motion between your feet and the floor, partly because of your hesitancy to use maximum force because of your inability to predict how the floor might move.

To fix this, I tend to tell my students, “When you’re done blocking, you’re done moving”, which isn’t entirely correct, but it’s correct enough to get my point across within the context of this drill.