gamesecosse

The best place to hit someone...

People generally regard a bad leg or any weak area of the body as the worst place to hit someone. Surely it's the best place to hit someone!!
I still remember practicing with a particular character from my previous karate club. On one occasion, I tagged or made contact with his weak leg during a foot sparring session. He seemed to complain for the rest of the practice. More experienced karateka (someone who practices karate) find themselves being tagged frequently during sparring regardless of the fact that Shotokai is in theory a non contact style (during training at least). This is mainly because they have to learn to defend themselves against realistic threats, such as would occur in the pub on a Saturday night... However, this 'incident' was not properly handled by my training partner, who was more experienced than myself. If he was on the street and someone took a dislike to him, he couldn't very well tell them not to hit him on his bad leg!!
It's this attitude that can ruin practices for many. People tend to think they are better than they really are, (with anything) and shut off the possibility of learning from someone who is less experienced.
In theory, an individual who has maybe only been training for 2 weeks, should be able to turn around and tell me if they think that something that I am doing could be improved. In reality, this would sadly never happen and the higher grade would just dismiss the idea...

posted by qmchaz64 @ 4:37 pm