Pinan Yondan kata

The point I was making for the third movement was not to forcefully pull the arms back before pushing them out to make the X. After the second move with arms high, take the tension away and let them drop towards the side of your body, whilst your body begins to move forward. They will end up in that double hikite position with no additional effort and then you can shot the arms forwards.

Concentrate on the fluid movement from Steps 2 to 3. Do not momentarily stop back in that central spot, in a squat position with both arms pulled back. Yes, it's useful in the early stages of teaching and remembering, but later on, drop it. As soon as you relax the arms from Step 2, your centre should be moving forward already. Your arms lag behind your body, but that's another forthcoming blog post.

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.

Running through Pinan Shodan kata this time.

The biggest test of your stance is across the first three set of arm movements. We are all human and of different levels of flexibility but we should at least see if our knees are moving or if our feet are not quite in the correct position, so we have a fighting chance of improving. Too often people are only concerned about the arm movements, if we work on both, our flexibility and range of possible movement will improve.

On the second movement, try to make the right hand travel high and straight. It doesn't not come in from the side. It is a full and not stunted motion also.

For the third movement, the "tetsui" strike is to the temple area.

Within this sequence, do not let the shoulders tighten up or else they will stay high for the whole section. Even though the "tetsui" is going up, the shoulders and weight should feel as they are going down.

 Running through the finer details of Pinan Nidan kata with my students.

The first move is not about using the fist like a hammer to hit something directly to "block" it. It's about using the whole length from elbow to fist to drop down and cover the width of the body. Likewise, for movement 4, the principle remains the same, but the angle of the arm is different because the width of the body facing the opponent is different.