May 18, 2006
A Lesson in Restraint
In karate, everyone is always talking about control. [Mat] recently learned what happens when the person you are sparring with lacks control. His opponent also lacked decorum and respect. Lirian Fae has also found out about control, or the lack thereof, recently. Higher ranks are supposed to have control over their punches and kicks during sparring or bag work. In other words, you don’t have to knock someone on to the ground to prove you’re effective. The people who have the most control over their moves are the ones who know their distance and timing as well.
I’ve got a lesson for you in control. Tonight at karate class, we did bag work. We haven’t done bag work in a while because our classes have been pretty small. Tonight, our class was filled with little people. (I felt so old it wasn’t even funny.) The closest person in age to me? He’s in high school. Most of the students tonight were closer to Big I’s age then to mine. So, when we were told to get in pairs, I was hoping that Big I would want to pair up with someone more her size and rank. Not a chance. "I want to be your partner, o.k.? O.k.? O.k?" There were two brown belts in class, one green (me), one yellow and then five little white belts. I was hoping for some brown belt action, but it wasn’t to be. 
So, I held the bag for her first. We started with snap kicks. Instead of holding her fists up in front of her and using them to balance (I don’t expect her to actually move them around yet to block while kicking), she swings her arms up and down with each kick. Each kick ends up looking sort of like an out of control pendulum swinging up and maybe making contact with the bag before it goes crashing down to the floor usually along with the rest of her body. Tonight she made some decent contact with the bag; her kicking technique is another story. She does seem to take a special kind of joy in kicking Mommy though. That can be a little disturbing. So, after Big I gave Mommy (and her own butt) a beating, it was my turn.
After being in a bear of a mood all day long, I was hoping to be able to really nail the bag, maybe do some thrust kicks or something. With Big I, I’m lucky if she’ll hold the bag upright instead of sitting on it and pretending it’s a raft. (Yes, bo’s are ‘horsies’; bags are rafts. We’ll get there people, eventually).
When Big I holds the bag, it goes from her ankles to just under her chin. Instead of holding the handles on the sides of the bag like I do, she loops her one arm through the handles on the back of the bag. Instead of getting into a side ways nai hanchi or a front facing seisan stance for support, she usually teeters on her heels, grinning ear to ear and trying to just hold the bag up. Honestly, all I really hoped for is that she would just hold the bag still.
While partnering with her over the past year or so, I have snap kicked the bag right up into her chin on numerous occasions. This shouldn’t happen if you’re holding the bag correctly. Big I doesn’t seem to mind though. She usually cracks up, and stumbles around the dojo with the heavy bag, her arm firmly looped through the back handles. Sometimes, she thinks that when she has the heavy bag, it’s time for a good old-fashioned game of tag. It can get a little frustrating at times, but her laugh is so intoxicating and funny that it’s hard not to be at least a little bit amused.
So, Big I held the bag like she always does, stumbling around from side to side and back to front, forcing me to constantly reevaluate where I would place my kick and how far away I needed to be from her in order to not send her flying. Each kick, I grazed the bag, moving it enough to let her know I hit it, but not enough to throw her for a loop. I was frustrated in the beginning, but then I started looking at it as a learning experience. When, after all, will a sparring partner or a bad person on the street for that matter, stand still so I can kick them?
They won’t.
So, just as I was adjusting to the constant resetting for snap kicks, my instructor decided to change it up with round house kicks. When doing round house kicks with a partner, the partner turns sideways and holds the bag in front of them. You stand facing the opposite direction, draw you foot up, lean away from the kicking leg, and extend your leg out the side to make contact with the bag with the top of your foot.
Round house kicks are challenging. You must maintain good balance. You must land your kick and then place your foot back down and reset. I’ve found them to be the most challenging kick, even more so than the back or side kick. I didn’t realize how challenging they would be though, until I had a squirmy kid holding the bag who just didn’t get it. She kept turning and facing me, forcing me to kick the side of the bag, a rather small target of only a few inches, compared to the front of the bag. I had to constantly readjust my position in order to make contact with the bag. It was sort of like a karate merry-go-round.
If there is one thing that Big I just doesn’t get, it’s positioning. After working with the bags for a while, we were divided up into groups. The white and yellow belts went to work on some of the lower kata’s and the brown belt and I went to work on our material with our instructor. I stole a couple glances across the dojo at Big I and instead of facing the mirror while doing kata, she firmly plants herself directly in front of someone who is doing the kata. She does this sort of dance the entire time. My instructor just figured it out a few weeks ago. She learns best if you mirror her. You have to be facing her; standing beside her doesn’t work. I guess this could explain why her positioning with the bags is so off too. She just doesn’t see how the system is supposed to work yet. I have faith though, that eventually she will.
In another few weeks, I am going to start staying for the later class which is all brown belts, mostly ones who will be testing for black belt in the summer. I am hoping for some good bag work then where I can focus on my technique more than on crazy distancing (I’ll save those lessons for sparring.) In the meantime, I’ve got my heavy bag downstairs; and apparently learning better technique is going to have to be a solitary venture.
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lol – I can just see her wobbling about the mats with the pad!!
On the whole one thing that annoys me sometimes is you get a partner that is just static all the time when holding the pads. I try to regularly partner up with one of a couple of guys who I know will give me a good workout – ones who’ll move around the mats, not throw targets up at regular 1, 2, 3 type intervals and general make life hard! To be honest when we train self-defense techniques I have a similar grumble – I like punches and kicks to come pretty much out the blue, pretty quick and that’ll actually HIT ME (tho’ not too hard!) If you don’t train like this when something does come out you your reactions would be all over the place!!
Still, at the moment I’d just like to get my ankle sprain healing back to regular training without worrying about injuring it again!!
We did a targeting and control drill Tuesday night in class. Our Sensei likes those pool noodles. He puts them over bo staffs for practice (they don’t hurt as much when you get hit with them). We practice “sword fighting” usuing the noodles. He has also taken a bunch of them and cut them into smaller pieces to use for targeting. What we did the other night was put the noodle pieces on top of the wavemaster bags and we had to kick the noodle off the bag, without hitting the bag. It’s harder than you would think.
“Learning better technique is going to have to be a solitary venture”
Unfortunately, it often is. But that’s the whole point. Isn’t it?
Why would the sensei allow for you to be partnered with a 5 year old? In my dojo we had an unwritten rule that people of like size and ability needed to be parntered. I’d hate to think what would happen if one of your kicks got away from you when she was squirming around. In addition to a bug phobia she might develop a mommy’s foot phobia! Better get Aunt C on the phone pronto. (insert winking face)
sorry about that, hit the “post” button too fast.
But yeah, it’s kind of the point. Sometimes, you have to learn on your own. Through practice.
I was on a forum recently. I was asking about my tsukis, which seemed unpowerful to me at the time.
I got all sorts of advice. Ranging from, ok, the mechanics are this and the mathematical equation is that TO punch a thousand times each hand, you’ll get it.
In fact, the best thing for me was a mixture of both. Understanding the physics through practice. Can’t wait to get back at it. Right now, everything I do is without power, speed, etc. Sucks.
Hit that bag. It’ll be sorry. try stuff, exagerate movements, contract them, relax muscles, contract them, work on focus, hit sloppyly. Experiment. And if you need motivation, put a picture on that bag 🙂 Mother-in-law, maybe? KIDDING. Move around it, practice entering, leaving the opponent’s space. That practice will only be limited to what you can imagine.
Have fun!
You got a great lesson in targeting and control, even if you’d rather have gotten some power and speed training that night =). I do think it’ll be good for you to stay for the later class when you can though; at green belt you are high enough that you would benefit from being pushed a little more physically.
And a comment for Mat… I’ve always felt (and it’s been proved through observation time and again) that good technique should come before power and speed. You can always add them to good techniques (in fact, proper technique helps you increase your speed and power). People who got their power and speed first have a much harder time cleaning up their techniques later on; some of them end up essentially re-learning their basics. So even though you may be frustrated right now, that power will come, and you’re better off in the long run =).
It’s nice you can get to train with your daughter. But I know first hand how frustrating working out with kids (especially your own) can be. You’ll really like the brown belt class, I’m sure. If you train on a heavy bag, particularly one designed for boxing, DO NOT kick it, even if you’re wearing footwear. They’re not designed for kicks at all, and you’ll end up hurting yourself. Save the kicks for the pads.
Our school is all for the family working and playing together but we wouldn’t get a 5-year old to hold a heavy bag for an adult. We would, however, have an adult and child pair up to do self-defense or forms (I believe forms in TKD is like kata).
But it was an interesting challenge for you!
Does the school have a Kid-Kick bag? Those are great for kids and also for adults to practice low kicks.
I think that distance lessons are some of the hardest learned. To me, it seems that you got a really great one there:) Another plus side is that you get to train with your daughter and be a HUGE part in her martial arts experience. Good job Mama^^