Whipping It Into Shape

Deciding to work out is fairly easy; deciding WHAT to work on is the tricky part. These videos of George Donahue that Mark Belluscci has been posting giv me a good starting point. Even this one, only 3 minutes long has too many possibilities for me to work on at once. I select from among the comments and corrections he makes and figure I'll watch it again sometime and find something else to work on.


In this case, I decided to start with the whipping motion George talks about in relation to Pinan Shodan. The koshi will get there first, he explains, so what's furtherest from the koshi, i.e. the wrist and hand, will get there last. Therefore, it should snap into place last like something on the end of a whip.


The other thing that caught my attention was the idea that backfisting from the arm in the age (jodan) uke eliminates the tendency or need to wind up for the punch. Really?... Yeah. Really!! Cool!!


So, I played around with the mirror in the dojo until I had a reasonable view and got to work. I went through the full kata only 5 times but, in between, I was talking myself through the opening move: "Ok.Wrist snaps into place last. Then BACKFIST into the punch."


I also reminded myself to keep the hikite hand dynamic (remember that from last time?). After all, the only way for me to progress is going to be learning how to hang on to as many of the things I am working on as possible and to apply them to as many things as possible. So, I worked through Kyan No Sai a few times, working out some of the kinks and trying to apply the same principles. Then I worked on Passai, once again, trying to apply the same principles: whipping, eliminating wind-ups and putting the hikite hand to work. I did five full repetitions of Passai and worked on pieces in between.


I got stuck towards the end of Passai when I realized tat there was there was this one part that I hadn't felt comfortable with for a long time: the cut kick-stomp-punch down combination. I worked on the timing to get more power out of the punch. That helped but I have a long way to go.


And plenty of workouts ahead, I expect.