Tonight was the first workout of the new year! Most everyone was stretching and complaining about being too lazy over the holiday before class, luckily I didn’t feel all that bad once class began.
The focus of tonight’s class was basic technique, examining hip action and stance. We started with some basic body rotation and vibration drills, and proceeded to do a fairly simple jab/reverse punch combination in natural stance, then L-stance (can’t remember the Japanese for that one), then moved to sanchin-dachi, then hangetsu-dachi, then fudo-dachi. After ten on each side, we then moved on to a similar combination but with kicks instead of punches.
Sensei Tarrant talked at length about the notion of “outward tension” stances and how that concept explains the proper application of tension incorrectly. He demonstrated by showing how most people internalize that instruction: to push their knees out at an odd angle from the center-line. He went on to explain that more correctly, stances bend in the direction of the joint and you’re likely to do yourself some real damage by forcing tension across your joints when they don’t bend that way naturally. Further, it adds strength and stability and you don’t have to fight your own body to get natural motions to augment your techniques. It struck me as he was explaining this that this is something that I discovered when working with Sarah Dukes on moving in back stance several years ago. If you bend the front knee forward (in the direction it is naturally slightly bent towards) it gets your stance going and you don’t have to fight your own center of gravity to gain the proper movement. This concept is interesting to me and I want to explore it further.
After far too many of those, including varying combinations that folded in side snap, side thrust, and roundhouse kicks, we moved on to kata. Each of us counted through a Heian kata of our choosing, followed by once through the kata with no count. The class finished up with Tekki Shodan in similar fashion.
I’m happy to get back to training hard, it was rejuvenating to be back at my home dojo over the Christmas break and it has excited me for more karate.
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