The topic of the last half of this week was deep, low stances. We translated much of this concept into one time sparring. It seems that most of us black belts like the idea of being lower in general, however our bodies are revolting against this particular brand of pain.
I spent much of this week off-and-on stiff, however by Thursday much of this was starting to work out. This stance training has already rewarded me in the fact that it (in part) prevented me from getting swept by
He expanded on the concept that he was exploring that night today. He showed us that he was working on body dynamics that exist in using a deep stance to set up and execute foot sweep. I found out today that I have never executed a sweep properly. Today, I only was able to conjure glimmers of the proper body movement and timing to produce a working sweep.
It appears that the key to it is locking your back leg down while assuming a natural position near enough to your partner to simply pull (not kick) the desired leg out from under them. I was working on this with Mike-san, and I got the proper feeling only a few times. My tendancy is to still kick the leg which is something that I am trying to resist. I believe that comes from many years of training without proper knowledge on how to execute a sweep, thinking that I had to put power and speed in there in order to affect my generally larger opponents.
We spent a long time during class today (until nearly 10:30!) on exactly this. It is something I will continue to explore, as I think it could be a valuable tool in my arsenal.
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