Continuing Steps in Karate

Every so often I tape myself doing kata so I can review if what I think I'm doing is what I'm actually doing. Here's one I did a couple of weeks ag, and as usual, there were a few things I thought I was doing and wasn't, as well as a couple of things I didn't think I was doing, but was. But, since that was the point of the video, that's ok. One interesting point about this run-through was the difference in being able to freely move between stances on the soft, springy grass compared to the dojo floor - an excellent reminder to me to keep practising on different surfaces and with different footwear, as aspects of my normal footwork needed to be adapted for the grass. It is well worth making semi-regular videos to review progress and form; not to mention it makes for interesting and educational viewing when there are multiple years of videos to look back over. I have, for instance, videos of myself doing sanseru kata from 2010, 2015 and 2020, and whi...

February is the month for me to concentrate on sanseru and tensho kata.  So, here is me performing sanseru, shot early last month. For those who know this kata, you probably notice several differences in performance.  The most notable (apart from my general poor form) are: two punches per step at the start.  This is the variant we commonly practice, but we also have the more traditional option of the single punch as well "steeple" blocks before all the kicks the separation of the two mae-geris in the first section into a kansetsu-geri, finishing of one application sequence, and then a mae-geri, starting off the next application sequence shifting the stance up to maintain distance and balance between the feet when doing the elbow/punch arms out (I did them more up than they are meant to be.  It's ok though, when practising the technique with a partner, I hold them properly - I'd get punched in the face otherwise) when doing the two cross-arms, drop into shiko...