timing of steps/strikes

[Jeff Cook]

Shana, thanks; I will check out the new thread.

Laird, how do you feel about offering principles AND drills at the same time? The way you worded that in your post, it sounds like an "either/or" situation for you. I use drills (among other things) to teach and instill the principles in my students. But the drills HAVE to be realistic.

Please be direct and don't beat around the bush like in your last post above.

Hoshin, it seems like you are describing a quality of Army training: the concept of "crawl --- walk --- run." Kinda sorta, except I see Laird's point regarding teaching a certain timing/rhythm from the beginning. Where I seem to diverge from Laird is that I think it is acceptable, if not mandatory, to teach ALL THREE methods of delivery.

Not that I am saying you or Laird is "wrong" by any stretch - just different.

Jeff Cook

[Shana Moore]

Laird, I thank you for the two compliments embedded in that impressive diatribe!

I'm also impressed with the rather creative way you managed to curse vindictively and get around the site's filter. Please do not do that again.

Finally, I did agree folks learn differently, which (to me) DOES mean some can learn from day one. I do not feel everyone can, not that they shouldn't try and keep at it as they learn and continue to train. However, I will leave THAT discussion to the ones who are actually teaching students, as it's only observation & assumption for me, right now.

I ALSO stated that I liked some of your training methods. I was not being sarcastic.

I've not failed to address you statement that one can "hit right off the bat". I think it has merit. I just believe there are many ways to learn, and MOST folks benefit from many different viewpoints concurrently. It creates multiple pathways in the brain and experiences for the muscles.

I don't believe I've ever said I CAN'T learn to step/strike right off the bat; I believe I said I've found great worth in learning foundations and progression. I agree with Hoshin that the white/green kata imply this separation/progression (please re-read my comments on kanshiwa & kanshu, and on Kanbun's method). I did say not everyone can...again, my opinion...nuff said.

You know, I can't compete with, and won't try to do so, with your length or breadth of experience. I do believe everyone has opinions of worth, no matter how far along the path they've traveled. So, just as you tell me not to put you in a box or ignore your opinions; I would ask the same of you...for all participants in this discussion.

I will end this post with words that you, Laird, said that sum up the gist of what most are saying here, and quite nicely:

"many trails lead up the mountain"

[hoshin]

hi Jeff,
yes i guess crawl ,walk , run is a good description. but as i said many times now i do teach students to step and punch at the same time. this is fairly obvious learning kyu kumite. you really cant do it any other way. bag work is another tool to learn this concept. i like to use bag and pad work to teach the timing/ rhythm in punching. but... our system has a pre concieved link between ranks and kata. meaning your rank will determine what kata you are working on. white belts will not be learning sanseiru. could they learn it ? sure but we start with sanchin to teach primary concepts. konshiwa expands on these and adds more principals. konshu adds more and so the progression builds. the finnal movments of konshiwa ,,,slide forward then left circle block then right shoken are (as a standard) taught in this broken combination. i will let the new student do it as such untill they feel comfortable with the memorization. which might happen to be the same point they will obtain green belt ( maybe not for other teachers but for me yes) so then i point out that if they did it this way they would have been punched in the face. from this point on they realize all wa-uke should be done with a correct timing. this becomes even more valuable as they work on kanshiwa bunkai.
if however you know konshu kata you realize the exact same action is in the kata but it is by far different because of timing and maybe aplication.
my way i know is probably not the standard.
the wa-uke actually starts the action, it will get 3/4 of the way thru ( about the point of contact,,that being your left hand is a little below your right shoulder) then the foot and right hand begin their actions, the left foot slides out and touches the floor at the same time as the left wa-uke hand ihas past the face but is not pulled back yet, then the right shoken fires and the right foot and hip make a very quick explosion to the point where the right foot actually slides up a bit and as the wieght drops in the right hip and foot the shoken makes contact , the wa-uke pulls in and everything comes together in a focused explosive contraction.

whew ....this is why i need a movie cam to show rather then try to explain.
anyway all of these actions trying to be timed correctly, i truly belive there is way to much going on and those i show it to even at brown belt just kinda give me this blank look and say "yeah someday"

and another point ,,,
could i teach this from the begining ,,YES. but it would rob the student from there own experimentaion. this is my timing. my way, my kata. it is not the only way. i have changed the way i do it over and over for years on end. i would like my students to come to their own way and make it THEIR KATA. this is why i belive gradual building blocks work better. it allows students to examine what they are doing. there is no right and wrong only a process of becoming.

[Stryke]

a Brown belt cant do a wauke ? timing ? , its a circle ?

I`m lost I give up .......

It`s tooo hard !!!

http://www.uechi-ryu.com/forums/viewtop ... b3a5946a89

[hoshin]

so anyways.....what was i saying ...oh yeah the ending of konshiwa and konshu....
what makes my version "advanced" is the not the action in and of itself but the small refinements that it includes.
the wa-uke for example is not done at a constant speed. you cant do it that way if you want all three actions to end at the same time. the wa-uke has to speed up as it travels. but not at an incremental pace, meaning for every inch it speeds up lets say 5 miles per hour. rather it moves incrementaly untill contact then hits a kind of critical mass and speeds up dramaticly as the other actions come into play. then there is the elipitcal pattern. i dont use a vertical plane on this. i use a 45 % angle and as i make that imaginary contact i use that pulling ripping action Van is so fond of.
on the shoken, i shift my rotational axis from my physical center to the left side of my body ( there was a clip Van had posted on his forum about this )
this makes puts your body mass into the strike. but it does make you have the feeling you want to step thru, but the kata dictates a slide so when you add your hip action ( which is a two axis rotation, both vertical and horizontal) it pulls your right foot forward. i call this a power slide because you get the sensation not of steping but that the strike and hip has enough power to slide your body forward.
now the shoken itself is not the typical piston type strike. it actually has a bit of an over arm arch to it. this is a cool little adaptation i learned from Bob Cambell. it might resemble a baseball pitcher and does have that elastic snap Bill has been talking about in his Forum. the point of contact is not the tip of the knuckle but rather the flat of the second joint then you flex your wrist forward on contact and roll the contact from the flat to the tip, ( kinda has a ripping action to it).

i could keep rambling on but the point is advanced is not magic , it is not so difficult people cant do it but it is a continual REFINEMENT. i think that is what some of the nay sayers are missing,,, that there are levels of refinement. subtle refinements that people work on for years and years.
you cant work on everything at once. if you could it would take a week to be a black belt. it takes time to remember this stuff. so what do you work on first? well thats your choice but you cant do it all at once. so therefore there HAS to be levels or building blocks.

[Stryke]

did you just call me a naysayer ? , and tell me what I miss ?

dont worry dont need to repay the favour .

of course learning things is incremental , but as you say it can be taught the correct way from the start , its not advanced it`s a question of time and increments and understanding , with the correct functional explanation from the start .

not advanced at all .... good post .

If you alter the movement , the timing , you are unlearning the proper mechanics .

what is advanced for you is simple for another style , why ? , not because of depth , but because of understanding and instruction .

there are natural progressions , you dont teach throwing then falling , etc , but there is no too hard to start

[hoshin]

btw.. styke you got mail

[Jeff Cook]

Good stuff folks; thanks for the detailed replies!

Jeff Cook

[Stryke]

Didnt get any mail

[Rick Wilson]

Hoshin:

“i could keep rambling on but the point is advanced is not magic , it is not so difficult people cant do it but it is a continual REFINEMENT. i think that is what some of the nay sayers are missing,,, that there are levels of refinement. subtle refinements that people work on for years and years.”

I think you are reading these posts incorrectly.

There is indeed a constant refinement and continual learning we go through. Many layers and as soon as you learn one you find there is yet another.

The difference is in the expectations of a beginner.

I do not expect a white belt to land on their weapon but I darn well will have them working to strike with the transitions and trying to.

I darn well expect them to land their strikes with mass from day one.

I have a progression that can teach a person to strike pretty darn fine in an hour to two hours.

I have a method to teach striking in a woman’s self defence class that will have them striking hard too.

Now both of these leave tons of layers left to teach and learn but why not expect them to strike well with body coordination from day one?

Some most certainly will get it faster than others and there are many layers they will not see for some time but I see the expectations as set way too low.

They may even be not so great at it but they will be attempting to do it correctly.

You should be able to land a decent strike the first week of your training.

And that strike should not even compare to a year later or two or three etc.

Teaching a person to move with the six harmonies will not happen in a month but getting them to move knees and elbows should.

Just because we have higher expectations for the beginner doesn’t mean we don’t have even higher expectations the longer they train.

[Laird2]

Shana , glad you caught the positives!

Took me a moment… the language filter…then it hit me oh yeah I indirectly used the “F” word. Sorry if my vernacular disturbs your sensibilities. But where I come from you hear it out of the mouths of wee children , I think they pick it up from American TV you know MoFo and all that American culture we get off the airwaves. America has much cultural influence on our nation as they dominate our air waves.

I work in the transportation industry and talk to truckers daily. I tend to speak the lingo after all these years. In my neck of the woods if encounter an a-hole or someone behaving like one we tend to let them know about it up here. We are a simple people and tend to deal with issues directly.

Now in the hopes of being pc I did attempt to translate
“ Steve Sensei please stick something in your grain path and seek self gratification!” However it came out as gibberish as a result of linguistic sentence structure issues.

But rest assured that I will endeavour to be as culturally PC as possible. I will reframe from uttering any 4 letter works until such time as your new bundle of joy brings them home from school and can explain the concepts to you. This should give you a six or seven year reprieve from this horrific word.

Now had I spent the time I could have said to my buddy Steve Sensei : あなた自身に愛を作りなさい This would have expressed my displeasure with his post and it would have been in keeping with Georges linguistic demands. As a Canuck we also live under demands of the French Language Police. The FLP are very aggressive in their demand to preserve French culture. So I also understand you are but another language cop doing her job. I’ll do my best to help you out!

Steve:

Glad you thought that was a 1st class rant! Anything worth doing should be done well.

Please rest assured that I’m responding to you from a position not influenced by emotion. I am not crying or losing sleep or angrily pounding on my key board. I am simply responding to your post by telling you to go get stuffed! I’m quite relaxed.

2... i never said you PERSONALLY were a bad teacher.

You are hair splitting no? Now what? Claim it’s just an inadvertent phantom insult. Bill would be impressed!
Tell you what Steve. If you honestly feel you have done no harm you can give up your daily self gratification exercises. No worries, mate!

Unless of course you are enjoying the your self, if so please feel free to continue.

Steve and Shana, please start acting like big kids and stop crying about your rights to an opinion. You’ve both expressed one. I don’t have to agree with it. And if I don’t you’ll recover, to speed up your emotional healing, it’s probably best to accept the fact in life some people will not see the world through your eyes. This in no way should cause you the kind of emotional distress and moral outrage you are displaying….get over it! At no time in this thread have I told either of you that your not entitled to your own opinion so piss off with this silly posturing. Can I say piss off? Well I guess if I can’t the language filter will catch it.
Now can we return to some healthy dialogue or do you guys still want to play word games and posture wounded, because I’m not interested, too time consuming and counter productive.

so i will apologize for pissing off people.

Accepted!

Don’t demand kata clips Steve, don’t demand anything of me. And no I’m not going to measure peckers and compare either.

This threat originally didn’t mention kata BTW.

Laird, how do you feel about offering principles AND drills at the same time? The way you worded that in your post, it sounds like an "either/or" situation for you. I use drills (among other things) to teach and instill the principles in my students. But the drills HAVE to be realistic.

Please be direct and don't beat around the bush like in your last post above.

Ha! You caught me working on my interpersonal skills Jeff. Welcome to the forums. I find it necesary to focus on house cleaning projects from time to time.

I have no problem presenting principles and drills. Drills make great vehicles for learning. You will from time to time note on my posts that I some times refer to drills in a derogatory fashion. I'm referring to the traditional warm up drills, the traditional bunkai , and the yakasuko kumites when I'm speaking in this manner. I have no use for them. I don't train them don't teach them. I'm not a main stream Uechi guy , from time to time it makes folks uncomfortable.

[Jeff Cook]

I'm not much of a bunkai adherent either, probably due to my amateur level in karate. So I know where you are coming from there (although I DO use yakusoku kumite - among other training vehicles).

I don't know if it is right or wrong, but I firmly believe that kata, drills, and pre-arranged fighting (even free-form with rules) are all the same. In my mind they are all drills - they are governed by rules and parameters on how to conduct each one.

I'll stop now before I contribute any more to thread drift and look stupid.

Jeff Cook

[hoshin]

Laird,
_______________________________________________________________________
Don’t demand kata clips Steve, don’t demand anything of me.
_______________________________________________________________________
i wasnt demanding clips from you . please re- read.
_______________________________________________________________________
this is why i need a movie cam to show rather then try to explain
______________________________________________________________________

i was saying i wish i had a cam because i am not the best typest and it takes me awhile to type all that out. it would have been much easier for me to film my action and post it.

[hoshin]

well to maybe help (who knows if it might hinder) the thread and maybe balance some issues. i did a little research. Rick ,Laird and stryke were having an on line conversation about the teaching standards given to white and green belts and above but specificly green. there agreed opinion was that uechi could be in trouble because there is a declining expectation on beginers. i wrote stryke a mail saying that i agreed with this as well.( but it seems to have been lost in the mail) now that i have this frame work and a backdrop for their thinking and comments it all makes sense now on where they are coming from. i hope you guys can apreciate that this little piece of info makes a big difference in our understanding.

Rick
so if i am understanding this , you feel the standards are slipping and that white and green belts should be held to a higher standard then what has been shown in some peoples public movie clips.
i agree. should we teach beginers to drop mass into their punches when they step forward ( is this the picture you have in mind or are you thinking more?) ,,,yes i agree. reading all of you guys threads from this mind set i would have been right on board with it.

however when i read Shana's original post i was not thinking in this mind frame.
i was thinking in terms of beginers and their kata. white and green belts are probably learning sanchin , kanshiwa and konshu.
so in my thinking in these three kata there is no direct step and punch. there is usually a block before the strike. the only one i can think of is in konshu with a slide back fist. ( and yes i teach how to get power here on the slide)
but for simplicity lets stick with konshiwa. beacuse that is what i was mostly thinking of anyway. there are three turns in the beginging each with a wa- uke and punch. from my previous perspective reading your posts i would have to assume you teach white belts to ..
turn to their left ,starting with their head to see the attack, then block ,step and punch all at one time? so they all land together?

let me know if this is how you do it or if different, how you do it because i would like to finish my thought once i can understand better where yo uare coming from.

steve

[Shana Moore]

Steve,
Thanks so much for the clarification for all! you were correct in your assumptions on my viewpoint in writing the original post; however, I think the discussion that has come out of it has been very instructive and interesting!

For my training, we are taught the progression in Kanshiwa and Kanshu. I am realizing (duh-huh) that not all groups/clubs/dojos teach these kata the same way, or teach the kata at all!

Look forward to reading more on this from all, thanks for your participation.

And Laird, while you are sometimes as diplomatic as a mack truck (we all have our days ), you've posted some good thoughts and interesting viewpoints...so keep them coming. Yes, I would like to keep the language on this forum at a respectable level, becuase I believe all intelligent adults can express themselves without extreme cussing. I don't expect you to wear white gloves and stick your pinky out...just keep the language to PG-13 as much as possible and show respect to other posters. Thanks!