My Uechi Ryu notes
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Key notes/takeaways from the 2019 Summer Fest
Keep the kata movement fluid. Always remain in motion. You lose efficiency of motion when you have abrupt stops.
Notable drills:
Teaching note: Keep a momentum of activities and challenging concepts to force folks to exercise their brain and make connections.
When instructing, use visual cues, touch, and clear direction. Example:
You can beckon folks forward with making a motion on the side of the body you wish them to advance or retreat with. Right hand beckoning forward means advance the right foot. Pushing back motion with your left means push back. You can employ these words and motions to get a student to do something they haven’t done. Subtract cues to ensure they are getting it. If they struggle, just add the cues back.
Emphasize non-physical attributes of karate to instill a life change. Karate is more than an outlet for exercise, and if you present it as the life enriching thing that it is, folks are more likely to keep coming back.
“Sesei Says” is a fun game to play with folks. Give a series of strikes for a drill and if anyone flinches or strikes when you don’t say Sensei Says, then they fail that round. Rather than eliminating folks, failure is a series of pushups (maybe 1-5). Eliminating elimination keeps folks from feeling like a total failure while also allowing folks to continue to practice/drill.
Kanshiwa, as you turn, the circle block arm goes down to deflect a potential kick while the other arm is a check block. Circle block arm then comes up to control. We practiced doing those with the first 5 moves of Kanshiwa. We then did a similar block as we pivoted to th eback. The key is to check first and the circle block controls and pulls (into Sanchin) to open opponent to a strike.
Hip Rotation: Left sanchin. The question was, which punch can reach farther, the jab or the cross? The answer is the cross if you use proper hip rotation! THe key is the hip tuck and rotation, allowing the cross to strike beyond that of the jab.
Hot punch: Lose strike with a last minute tightening and allow your fist to form across the impact area. Push through the target. Before going into the strike demonstration, we practiced the depth by standing with our cross strike fist against the opponent’s pec and just rotated our hip to push through them.
Go before he goes! The session centered around seeing a strike and striking immediately toward your opponent.
After the session, I approached Mr. Bethany and asked about identifying attacks, mentioning that I felt slow. Mr. Bethany said to focus on solving my own tells and in doing so I would learn what tells to look for in my opponents and how to use them. Also, experience and many opponents help immensely.
“Anything straight is hard. Anything circular is soft”
This wasn’t a session, but I talked to Mr. Rose before we started. These are his (very paraphrased) words:
I always ask students why. Why do you do something a certain way? The style wasn’t meant to stagnate, but sometimes we find ourselves repeating things that worked years ago and not adapting it for ourselves and our own bodies. Instead, we need to learn the basics and keep those in mind as we move into position for striking. Example: Arm in Sanchin at a specific position…why do some people move their arms out of sanchin to intercept strikes? Stay in Sanchin and move hips with rotation to minimize the distance your striking/defensive arms are from your potential targets.
Receiving a punch similar to kanshiwa bunkai–block high on their arm, pin their arm under your armpit with other arm coming up to the shoulder to force an arm bar.
Master Chaile came up with a technique to ensure your sanchin strike is aimed and lands consistently in the right spot. That technique is: Pull arm back for the sanchin strike (forearm level with the floor) and bring your elbow down ever so slightly so that the strike is aimed to rise to the correct position.
Mr. Kelley discussed that at our ranks, the circle blocks should start to look more like a spiral, coming forward as you block.
Mr. Kelley showed a technique for getting out of a choke from the front (2 hands on neck). He showed the use of fishtails on the inside of the grab on the forearms of the attacker–right hand hitting the opponent’s right forearm then striking back at their left forearm, and then following up with a strike to the throat/nose.
Seisan jump back…don’t go for distance. Land on the ball of your foot. Practice kata at ludicrous speed to see where you struggle. More often than not it is in the footwork and balance. By doing that, you can focus your attention to your weakest link.
We worked kempo striking drills and gave them numbers. 1) Jab toward the head then cross to the chest as you move forward. 2) Side kick to the gut and cross to the chest as you move forward. 3) High block and drop low to strike the abdomen while you remain in place.
Mrs BR discussed how she uses her side kick as her jab, but rather than lifting the knee up to chamber and then kicking, she aims her foot in the direction she wishes to strike and then strikes hard. It doesn’t matter where you hit exactly–arms, stomach, chest, etc because the strike is hard.
Mr. Rose talked about distributing weight across the feat. About a cat stance with the front leg or the back leg as a way to shift weight around. He was clear about keeping the belt facing your opponent–well, he said to me and my partner: “Point your dicks at eachother!” He showed receiving low punches like “driving the bus” in Seichin while using the foot movements you should be using in Dan Kumite–deflect low and step toward your opponent at a 45 degree angle, keeping your belt toward them. Get close and have your blocking hand come under and into their ribcage or toward their neck. The key thing is to ALWAYS be moving and keep the momentum going with strikes and shifting your weight.
We worked some trapping motions.
We worked the early stages of that drill and worked our way up the the full drill.
This session started out with Mr. Yee telling us how he started training in Uechi Ryu. He had studdied Praying Mantis Kung Fu and White Crane Kung Fu. He heard about the Mattson Academy and went to check it out. They had him show one of his kung fu forms–it had flowery movements and elaborate poses. Then Bob Campbell showed his San Seiryu. Darin Yee thought the form sucked. Then Bob Campbell asked if Darin Yee could fight and Mr. Yee said of course. Bob Campbell then proceeded to beat Darin Yee from one side of the dojo to the other. Mr. Yee then asked if Bob Campbell could teach him how to fight like that and then Mr. Campbell asked if Mr. Yee would study Uechi Ryu. The rest is history! (Now he’s the president of the IUKF)
Mr. Yee said that Uechi Ryu is the most effective and direct style he has studied and that combat in the Uechi Ryu style is incredibly potent and possible. Praying Mantis fight like Praying Mantis, White crane fight in the white crane style. Why don’t we see many Uechi practitioners fight in the Uechi style using Uechi techniques at our lower ranks? So, he focused on our Sanchin to begin with:
Then we moved on to the wauke motion and its 6 blocks hidden within (as Darin Yee identifies them). First, Mr. Yee asked how you bring your hand down to do the wauke block. I said straight down and he asked why. I postulated that it could be a block. He then asked how often someone would strike to the outside of your gut? He then discussed how he brings his hand down–noting that there aren’t any wasted movements in Uechi Ryu. He brings his hand out in a check block, then circling down to a low block/deflection. Then the other arm comes across as a check block. THen the wauke arm comes across and blocks low with almost a fish-tail. Then the block circles up to circle block and the other hand comes out into some semblance of a circle block. That’s the 6 blocks.
Then we worked them.
Then we ran out of time.