Tension-compression and the move that releases

In tegatana we talked about the pause between each step. When we are practicing this kata we always place a pause after each step and when we begin stringing these steps together in rapid succesion the brain retains the perception of a pause after each walking cycle. This allows an opportunity to change your mind or change your motion aftereach walking cycle. In hanasu we did one or two reps of kata mode and the point came up again that there were only three types of releases - walk-arounds, passbys, and walk-unders. Gary said that today he finally got that point and understood the logic in the order of the exercise. As a class we worked on shomenate, aigamaeate, gyakugamaeate, and ushiroate. Then we moved into chain #5 techniques, including the tension-compression oshitaoshi and hikiotoshi. This was a good opportunity to play with Henry's lesson on not releasing then moving but rather releasing with the movement. At this point we split the class with Gary and Kristof working on hanasu and Andy and me working on Nijusan #6-9 (oshitaoshi, udegaeshi, hikiotoshi, and udehineri). The tension-compression idea crops up in this set a lot too.

After a pause for breakfast, Andy and Gary and I worked on jodo kihon 1-4 in both solo and paired practice. Then we worked briefly on seiteikata#1. I saw some sparks of familiarity from Andy, who has seen this stuff a few times, so that's good. We'll keep working on it and we'll get better at more and more of it.