2007 Workout #76-77: More distancing and Kickapoo #2…

On Tuesday we did more excellent drills on distancing after a killer first class by Sensei Quinn. I’m really starting to feel good with some of the “covering ground” things that Sensei Brewer is having us do lately, I hope we get to do more soon.

Tonight was Kickapoo #2, where and I taught 3 time attack and vital areas of the body. Oedewaldt showed up to help us out, which was nice because it is always good to have more hands on deck when sparring is introduced. We did a normal review, however taught the basic combinations in order to build a foundation for us to do the sparring section of the class later. Since sparring homework is difficult, we made the combinations themselves the homework, dividing it up into the three main types of three time attack.

After a scintillating speech with demonstrations of the vital areas of the human body by , it was my turn to teach the sparring. I made VERY sure that the class wasn’t close enough to get hurt by one another, and ran them through the combinations explaining where the targets were and how important attention was.

I felt like the class followed along extremely well, and they were answering questions about targets, vital areas, and order of techniques by the end of the night. We capped off the night with a little slow to free sparring demonstration to illustrate to the kids where these fundamental sparring skills were leading to, stressing respect for your partner and safety all the while.

I’m continually impressed with the kids in Kickapoo and the involvement level of the parents. Several stayed after to complement us on the class and that really made us both feel good. I like that club quite a bit, and it seems that the addition of the homework assignments really make a difference in how quickly the kids pick up the material. I hope we get to roll that aspect into the other clubs… now if only we had a way to make the adults do homework assignments. 🙂