Pinan Sandan kata

One of the finer points of Pinan Sandan I have covered in a separate blog piece around managing the arms in movements 2 and 3 called Windscreen wipers in Pinan Sandan. This is important to grasp early on as it leads into the opening sequence of Seishan. A tense upright torso with stiff immovable shoulders does not help here.

When you pull back after the nukite, have it in your mind that you cannot pull with the arm, imagine that someone is tugging on it very hard. All you can do then is to pull and drop your body weight forward, using your weight against theirs. If someone is 100 Kilograms and you are 60 Kilograms then this isn't going to work very well when tested in the dojo. Students can end up playing tug of war but this is a false equivalence. When testing someone, the aim is to give them enough resistance to ensure they learn to move their body correctly. Then increase.

I'm sick of seeing people on courses providing this tug of war resistance, which just leads to the other person doing something different, usually wrong, to overcome that false situation.

If someone much stronger and heavier were to grab your wrist in this nukite point of the kata, then kick them in the shin or groin prior to moving or strike their eyes and move forward instead. Also, the moving away should be done as the grab is being made. To stand there and let someone grab you, waiting till they have a firm grip to then apply the movement is a controlled approach to breaking things down, feeling where you may be using muscles and movement incorrectly with regards to Wado anyway.