White Rock Kenshinkan Karate Dojo
Austin's only Shorinryu Karate & Kobudo Dojo
Tuide notes: Remember your anchors and circles. Understand that the first set is fundamental and all things build on it.
Kobudo notes: be mindful of the strong and weak sides and distancing. Fight the opponent not the weapon.
General notes: Think about where your hips can help your technique, but don’t look silly. You’re not doing the hula…
Slow down!!
As the adage goes, “Slow is smooth. Smooth is fast”. For beginners, slow is hard but lets your body learn the mechanics and lets you see them or better yet, feel them.
Remember the #1 rule, though, “Take your time, in a hurry”
Fight in a phone booth
Keep it in close, but remember you have some room.
Don’t over-extend or make too much work.
Abandon locks, all ye who enter…
In tuite, if that lock slips and the space grows, abandon that hope.
Points to remember:
Sweep, punch, block
Wrist snaps
Front kick
Knees up, toes up!!
Kobudo training with the bo, tonight!
Concepts from karate translate to kobudo…or vice versa…?
Body placement and stance are in effect here, as well as those circles we talk about. Awareness is very important, in this case body and weapon awareness.
Bo is a great tool because it translates to almost any size stick.
Tonight we worked on the next level of tuite.
Note that now we’re shifting stances. That equates to shifting weight and change body! Pay attention to your stances and keeping shoulders and hips in alignment. Start to pay attention to how the uke’s body responds. That will be more and more important!
We started our trip down kumite lane!! At WRKK we do most things from a defensive stand-point. So, usually we will approach it as we did last night, one attacks and the other defends. We will also do a more “traditional” type of sparring, as well.
Congrats to the new 9 kyus!!!
Tonight we covered material for the next level, ippon kumite with a counter and an intro to kobudo with some bo warm up exercises and a couple of basic techniques.
Kumite – See!? All that talk about blocking with intent and looking for circles comes into play more now! Good clean blocks and don’t rush the counter…
Kobudo- a bit on the bo and common concepts that are in karate and kobudo. See the push/pull and the circles in the techniques? Kobudo helps with awareness, as you can see. Or probably feel, once or twice…
We added another set of hubud to the list, using the backfist
Focus on controlling both the uke’s hands and yours and let the natural flow work to apply the technique. Recall that transitioning between set 1 and set 2 was easy once the flow was established.
We worked on some basic kick defense drills. First using an open hand parry adn then blocking with legs.
Remember to focus on having a good foundation AND good balance. One of the big take-aways from these drills is recovering balance as well as practicing some defense moves.
Tight fingers & timing are important when using the hands..as always body positioning is key!
Timing, balance and recovery are also hard when using legs, but legs defenses are usually more practical…
Stance, alignment and recovery need to be always in your mind when training.
We added the combos from the basics into the 25 basics.
Recall that for sweep/punch/block if follows the same concepts found in other karate basics, extending and gathering power and momentum. Remember to recover your stance and pay attention to balance alignment!!
For the combos also remember to make all the techniques distinct and correct. Again, concepts need to be applied. Body positioning is always important.
Good round of basics with the addition of some combo techniques.
Remember, when doing the combos it’s better to slow up some and do the technique correctly, rather than shortcut it to try and keep up. Try not to slow the class down, but take the time you can to focus on the technique. So if you’r struggling, keep stepping but focus on the technique at hand…
Koteate intro went well. Remember to breathe and stay loose until the point of impact.
Protocol note: Remember when someone who outranks you demonstrates something, makes a correction or answers a question respond with “Hai!” and “Domo Arigato!” using the appropriate title.
Hubud went well with the addition of a drill to upset stances. Remember: the drill works both ways and on a couple of levels.
Kata looked great!!