Just a handful of students down tonight (many of the students were at a farewell event for their friends visiting from Germany), plus I'm full of a cold inherited from the kids....
After a gentle warm-up and some dynamic stretching exercises we spent most of the night on two kata - pinan nidan and naihanchi. It was nice to have a good old fashioned kata session and it proved to be a nice wake-up after a loooong day at work.
We finished the class with some punching exercises on the focus pads using some of the ideas found within naihanchi, paying attention to the feet, head and hips/waist and "shaking" (maybe "waving" is a better word) energy.
Thursday, February 12, 2009
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2 comments:
Do you teach bunkai with the katas or do you only do this with more senior students? My sensei is quite keen on us learning bunkai right from the start and though I believe a kata is not complete without understanding its fighting applications, I do find the bunkai a bit confusing sometimes. I think this is because the movements in the kata are much more stylised than the same movements performed in the bunkai. I don't know if its better to leave bunkai to more senior students (brown/black belts) when the kata are a bit more internalised. What do you think?
Hi,
Interesting question.... I guess it all depends on how "clever" the interpretations of the katas are, and how different they seem from the pure movements from the forms.
But to answer your question, yes we do study applications. I used to be quite into the whole "bunkai" area, but nowadays I see bunkai as just a small part of the whole thing. For example, minor changes in the way a technique is performed can have quite an impact on how it can be applied.
We practice applications at all levels. I find it helps students learn the kata because it helps to make sense of the kata. Applications can be as simple or complex as you want them, so it's easy to find the level appropriate to the class.
sji
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