Due to circumstance, tonight I was charged with teaching in Mapleton. McCabe and
I decided early on that I wanted to do something in the vein of a test review, since they have a pending kyu exam next week. I also decided to do things sans official warmup. They took to this quite well… we warmed up by doing standing punches and alternating front kicks. We eased into the workout by doing some basics. I took the opportunity to weave in elements from the session that I taught last week on pull-back and what that means for technique.
I saw that the class was having trouble with the notion of pull back during blocks, so we focused on that for awhile. I had them focus on scraping their elbows so they didn’t wing their whole body out of alignment. We moved on to inward block with reverse punch. Everyone was having trouble with arm position, so I had the class gather around and poke holes in my technique as I displayed different symptoms of bad inward block.
One of the students mentioned something about keeping your elbow in one place, which triggered a memory of an old drill. The drill goes as such: partners stand facing each other and then do each block in turn: inward block, downward block, outward block, and rising block. Each block will clash with the partner’s block, so you get some nice feeling of contact and also the understanding of how simple lack of elbow movement can enable a myriad of different blocks.
It was a fun aside… then I brought the class back together and we went through Taikyoku Shodan, Heian Shodan, and Heian Sandan. The whole class made it through Heian Sandan with some coaxing, and most of them had applied a little bit of hip action and pull back to something along the way. That’s why I consider tonight a rousing success!
Sensei Brewer even had some nice comments afterwards, which is always incredibly humbling and awesome.
Sensei Brewer had come in a little bit through the first class, and we were ready to roll for the second class. It was more basics, more hip action and power generation, more partner drills (the classic front stance hold down), and some more great time spent on kata. It really is amazing how quickly a simple concept can escalate into a full class when you’re having fun.
I got a good sweat up while doing kata with the second class, and I really enjoyed the opportunity to get some more teaching experience. I sure am glad that I have good Senseis though… teaching this stuff without good examples sure would be tough.
I’m going to try to get through 625 Sochin this week, however I made no progress tonight. I was talking over my nagging knee discomfort with Sensei tonight and he recommended that I take about three days off to allow this thing to heal up. I tend to agree with him that this would be a good idea, I may take his advice and take it easy during the Saturday workout.
Sochin Counter
Accomplished / Goal == Percent Complete
601 / 2000 == 30.05%
Average Kata per Workout: 15.41
Estimated Completion Workout: 130
Workouts that gained more than 1%: 14
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