This past weekend in Leicester England

General discussions on Wado Ryu karate and associated martial arts.
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Gusei21
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Joined: Tue Mar 15, 2011 1:43 am

This past weekend in Leicester England

Post by Gusei21 »

A lot of things were explained this weekend in Leicester at the JKF Wadokai training.

Basic key stuff like:

1) When people do kette junzuki or kette gyakuzuki, you have to bring your kicking foot directly under your leading fist. In other words you should be kicking the exact same target as the location you just punched. Again, this is only for kette junzuki and kette gyakuzuki. It does not apply for kette junzuki no tsukkomi jodan because the kette kicks are always chudan. For kette gyakuzuki no tsukkomi, after you punch your gedan location, you must first bring your body upright then kick chudan. So at the moment you kick you are still kicking under your fist because when you bring your body upright you should not be moving your fist down. Your fist that just punched remains fixed in the position it just punched. That means that if you bring your body upright you do not change the angle made by your arm relative to your torso, therefore you will still kick just under your fist.

2) Many people are not emphasizing the retraction of their leg after they kick. If anything more effort should be placed in the retraction of the kick rather than the extension of the kick when you kick.

3) In tobikomizuki and nagashizuki many people are not using the back hand to power their front hand. Their back hand is just laying passively against their chest as the front hand does the bulk of the work.

4) In Pinan yondan when we do the kick after around the 8th move or so..depending on how you count…it was explained that the hips must retract along with the kick before you stick the landing with the same foot you just used for kicking as you go for the backfist. The key point was that the right hip has to retract after the kick. But we sort of skipped the explanation as to why. And the why is important. The reason we are told to retract our hips is so that we will be back to neutral. If we don’t then we are fully committed to stepping forward for the backfist. That is not Wado. In Wado we should always retain the ability to move in any direction. We try to minimize committing in any direction. So by retracting our right hip back after the kick we enable ourselves to go back into neutral so that we can then make the next move a choice.

5) Lastly when the 4, 5, 6 dan candidates, the 3rd kyu instructor candidates and the current licensed instructors were taken to a separate room to practice kihon and kata Takagi Sensei made a point during Seishan for everyone to sink their hips. This point is really important but was not explained in length due to time limitations. So I want to take the time to explain it a bit. In Tai Chi this action is called making your kua ‘sung’. Your kua is your inguinal fold. Go google inguinal fold or inguinal ligament so you know what I mean. Think of it as where the head of your femur goes into your hip socket. I can write a lengthy bit on that at a later time but for now this will have to do. The reason this area needs to be ‘sung’ or lowered is because unless it is lowered you can’t transfer the force generated from your tanden as efficiently to the upper and lower body. If that doesn’t make sense now then that is fine but for now on how to sink your hips. First just stand straight in heiko dachi or naihanchi dachi – doesn’t matter. Just stand tall. Knees straight, spine straight – ramrod straight. Then from that position just bend your knees. You will soon notice that your knees are now carrying the weight of your upper body. That is how many people stand in naihanchi or yoko/tate seishan. Not so good. Instead of this, imagine your inguinal fold as your second knee. So go back to straightening your knee and being ramrod straight. From this position allow the head of your femur to slide up in your hip socket and allow that area to bear your upper body weight. Loosen your hips. Whatever works for you. Only then do you slowly bend your knees. When you do this you will notice that your knees are no longer bearing the weight of your body. Your hips will be bearing the weight of your body instead. This is what we mean by sinking your hips. It is from this weight bearing position that we stand in naihanchi, seishan, actually every stance. And again why is this important? Because only from this position can you truly start to have a connected body that is managed by your tanden. If you can’t sink you can’t get connection, you can’t get power transfer from your tanden to the rest of your body.

Congrats to Ben Pollock for passing his 5th dan. He was really great!
Bob Nash
Hartlepool Wadokai
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Joined: Sat Sep 01, 2012 10:02 pm
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Re: This past weekend in Leicester England

Post by Hartlepool Wadokai »

Thanks for translating over the weekend :-)
Carl Jorgeson
Hartlepool Wadokai
wadobob
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Joined: Wed Mar 16, 2011 3:21 pm

Re: This past weekend in Leicester England

Post by wadobob »

Well said Bob..

Tracy Bob Foster
Gusei21
Posts: 403
Joined: Tue Mar 15, 2011 1:43 am

Re: This past weekend in Leicester England

Post by Gusei21 »

Was just chatting with a good friend of mine and I was telling him the issues I face with translating for my Sensei at seminars because he has a tendency of being a comedian and sometimes the jokes don't quite translate well to English...(Takagi Sensei). Then I remembered someone asked a question during the seminar that I did not properly address because the answer got a bit awkward. The question was as follows:
In Chinto the bit where you stand on one leg, (the first one in the 3 part series) - is the left hand first in gedan barai then does it go to chudan barai on the second?. Or is it chudan on the first and chudan on the second? I intentionally blew that answer off because I did not like the answer I got from the instructor (not Takagi Sensei). The dilemma of being a translator. Do I just say what the guy said or do I filter? I am not going to knowingly say the wrong thing. So I just mumbled something.

Afterwards I turned to Takagi Sensei and asked him what I should have done? His answer - 'that was a bad question'. I told him that was not helpful because I get asked that a lot at seminars and I always tell people that the correct answer is gedan first then chudan as you kick. His response again was - that is the wrong question.
Then he said ' the hands are there for balance. Nothing more. It is not a block. So calling it a gedan block is incorrect. So the question 'is it a gedan barai or a chudan barai' is the wrong question.

What he means is simply this. In Wado we are not blocking. The hands are there just for balance. The first left hand position is LOW only because the other (right) hand is HIGH. Don't think block. Think balance. Nothing more. Low balances out high.

And that is what I should have said instead of mumbling about gedan and chudan blocks.
Bob Nash
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