Tonight Dad and I decided to go to Mapleton. We got there about 6:05 and Erbe-san was warming up the class. He was the only other black belt there, he asked me at the end of warm-ups if I had a plan and I said yes. There was a new person in the class (Paula? Looked very much like Kathy) so I started off with the run of the mill basics class.
About 20 minutes later, Sensei showed up. Erbe and I were kind’ve partner-teaching the class, I was using him for examples and demonstrations and he was chiming in with advice occassionally. I asked Sensei if he wanted to take over and he wanted me to go ahead. I moved from punching to moving in stance. Once I was at the end of breaking down lunge punch into three motions Sensei said “why don’t you teach round kick?”
My brain immediately reminded me that we had first-nighter in class. I said “I was going to go with front kick, but that’ll work!” and dove right in. I broke both front kick and round kick down into its component parts, and for simplicity’s sake I just had the class do it standing in natural stance. After they were throughly marinated in the round kick motions, I wrapped up the class with having everyone do round kick moving forward in stance.
Sensei said I did a really nice job. His only criticism was that I could’ve “shaved off” a little of the technique breakdown and let them do the kick across from a partner so they get the feeling. He said that I did a good job and that next time it would be Erbe-san’s turn. That’s fine by me, sharing the teaching love is a Good Thing.
The second class we did a brief study of reverse punch and some fun partner drills. It was a pretty casual and laid back class, which was a nice break from the really involved technical studies we’ve been doing lately. We did a pretty cool drill where we got in groups of three and did spinning around reverse punches against two attackers. I got across from Dad and Erbe, so it was The Fly versus Two Mountains (yes Matt, that does sound bad).
I really do enjoy teaching. It was a little awkward to be put on the spot for a certain technique in mid-class, but I think things went well enough. I’m glad it will be someone else on tap next time though… it always feels like somewhat of a hot-seat when either of the Sensei’s are watching.
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