Tonight, the duty fell to me to teach class since Sensei Tarrant and Brian are both out on vacation. The class started as just Paul and I, but shortly after three other Shodans arrived. I decided to structure the class very simply: I would take them through our Shodan exam one set of combinations at a time. After a few combinations, we’d stop and do five kata starting with Heian Nidan. After those five reps of the same kata, we’d go back to basic techniques and alternated the rest of the Heian kata in.
We made it through five reps of each Heian kata, and five reps of Bassai Dai. We also made it through the Shodan syllabus, and everyone was sweating hard. The class was collaborative, me pointing out regional fine point differences and we would try a few of these in each kata and discuss the merits of each. The guys had some fun, one of them had an “a-ha!” moment which I felt good about. Next class it’s going to be all about the Tekki kata and jyu-ippon sparring if I get to teach again.
It was fun to teach and rewarding to have some of the Shodans get some value out of the class… plus it helped sharpen PB for his upcoming Shodan cross-rank exam. More soon!
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