Friday, August 26, 2011

Kazoku, 8/25/11

Last night was the second class for our little group. Littler, even - only one student this time: Michael.
We started with ukemi (back falls), and Michael said he felt better about them this week than last week. He was eager to learn forward rolls, which I attempted to teach, and he picked it up much faster than I did when I was starting out.

We reviewed the first 3 parts of tegatana (walking kata) and added the next 4 (the pushes). Focus was on staying on the balls of the feet and moving our arms effeciently (not trying to pick an arm up when our body was dropping).

Next we reviewed Release 1, and ended up spending most of the class on it. I felt like we got a lot of good work in on this release. Really productive reps. It was a challenge for him to do the release without bending his arm too much to get into position, but there was a ton of stuff he was getting very right (synchronizing footwork, footwork timing, off balance, etc). And we all have things to work on in the releases, so he can join the club, haha! Some of the reps went a little haywire, but he was good at doing something (as opposed to freezing up), and usually it was enough - it got him off the line and made me unbalanced enough to have to take another step.

We discussed how some schools adhere more closely to the kata forms in order to internalize the principles, and others are less bound by the kata and primarily observe the principles (we're more in the latter category). We talked about not getting so focused on the kata that we forget what we're doing is getting out of the way and getting hands up; we try not to get the kata before the horse (sorry, I couldn't resist, and if said in a certain way, is a lot funnier than reading it).

For the last part of the class, we worked on release 2 as an option when release 1 won't go.

In the spirit of Pat, we ended with a couple "cool ninja techniques of the day". My ninja-ness being modest at best, I showed him a neat kote hineri from someone putting a hand on your shoulder, as well as something I can't remember the name of (uke grabs lapel or pushes, you feed that energy back to him in the form of a push or a strike or an eye rake - just giving him something to think about while you take possession of the hand he gave you to control his wrist and destroy his posture).

I was more aware of my time management - which is to say I noted how much time I spent on different things. I felt more prepared and more orgnaized, but there's still lots of room for improvement.

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