Less is more

It was a good class on Monday evening. One of two hours in the week truly dedicated to "advanced" students, it was indeed that with eight people in the class, five brown belts (all 3rd kyu) and three black belts.
Reason why I say less is more is that eight people is a perfect class size. In last week's class that resulted in my rant, we were something like 18 or so people. It wasn't really the fact that the class was an "intermediate/advanced" one, but more the sheer number of people that did us in. When it is that crowded, it doesn't always take much for a class to derail...

Back to this week's class, we started it with some work on our more advanced kata. Sure, work is always needed on our first few kata, like the pinan (#1 to #3) and kata like Circle of the Tiger or Statue of the Crane, but the more advanced kata like the two Cat kata sometimes have even more little things that need to be looked at. Being only eight in the room yesterday, and all of us starting with Cat 1 as the first kata of our evening, it allowed our instructor to see us more and correct. He pointed out to me some problems with my kokutsu stance. The kata starts with a bow, then to a quick horse stance, then to kokutsu facing to the left. I had never realized it, but when going to my kokutsu stance, instead of keeping a width of about twice shoulder width, I had a tendency to bring in my left foot a little too much, sometimes as much as 8 inches. This sometimes even cause me to raise my left heel and made it look more like a cat stance. I was happy to get that corrected and pointed out to me. I will pay attention to that in the future. Less is more in that case meant more instructor time for each student...

I know Cat 1 and Cat 2, but there also exists a Cat 3, that I will need to learn for my black belt test. People were asked to keep doing their highest kata when a kata they didn't have was called, so I did Cat 2 quite a few times, as the higher belts did cat 3 and Lin Wan Kune, which from what little I know, is an adaptation of a shotokan kata that we only learn at the black belt level.

Once done with the kata, we paired to work on self-defense moves against a variety of attacks. What I liked is that our instructor made it into an almost bunkai interpretation of Cat 1. That was neat. One strike we often call hammer to the head within the kata was also presented as a possible use of a sankyo wrist lock and we got to work on that which I liked since sankyo is one of my favourite wrist lock and one I often try to find a way to apply. We also saw that turning in another way, we could use kote gaeshi to control the attacker.

I was paired with one of the three black belts for these techniques which was really nice as I got to see what it is when moves come in naturally, nothing forced. Sometimes, less is more applies to much more than the number of students in a class. Less tension in your shoulders, fists, hips, body overall, means more, better reaction. I am still way too stiff. Will need to work on that.

FM