2026-04-15

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

Last night we talked about small habits, like keeping your hands closed when they don’t need to be open. For instance, there’s no reason to open the blocking hand during a rising block. Sure, you may open the drawing hand before closing it into a fist on the way back to your hip, but there’s just no reason to open the blocking hand while executing the block. No good can come from that, and you introduce the risk of injury by making contact with a loose hand.

Another small habit is improper thumb position. I see a lot of dangling thumbs, particularly on the drawing hand while it’s chambered on the hip. Again, there’s no reason to let your thumb dangle. It only introduced the risk of getting the thumb caught on something during extension.

Yet another is allowing yourself to get away with sloppy foot positioning. It’s one thing to have your feet off by an inch in front stance, but in heisoku-dachi and musubi-dachi, it’s impossible to hide a small mistake like that.

Is this nit-picky? Yes. Is that what my students pay me for? Also yes. Of course I spend more time on things that matter more, but once the large errors are eliminated it’s important to keep applying pressure to improve without being overwhelming. In other words, it’s never “good enough” but it might be “good enough for today.”