Body movement
I've recently gone off on a tangent teaching wise. The boys wanted more basics, and I erroneously thought they meant more kata, but, thinking about it, I figured what they meant was more simple views, so, past couple of weeks we've worked a lot on stance an moving stuff. Now, this is stuff which is taught explicitly in karate and our old style etc, so, we start with sunken stance weight over rear foot style thing, then we move forward to head-cuddle-maai. The tricky thing is, which way? I mean, some techniques go inside, some outside, how do you choose?
My solution, and the tangent bit, is, you let your feet do the walking, (bear in mind our old style taught response from a neutral stance, so you could go 'anywhere' - which is toss, as you wouldnt have the time) so, I have been saying choose a stance, left or right forward, whichever seems appropriate, if it's left forward, you have no choice but to move left and forward, as to move right side is awkward, this makes responses easier, 'I will move that way and deal with the attack as it comes' means that depending on jab/lunge you go inside/outside. er this probably sounds a little trivialised, but, I've been thinking about 'real stuff (tm)' and I figure a small set of rules of strategy are easier.
Is that reasonable? in a situation, you need to take _a_ stance, with best judgement, but, once it goes off there is no time to think so you must move without too much decision process in the way. The T stance with weight over rear leg is great for rapid entries in the direction of the lead leg, so we choose that as our direction regardless of attack, and deal with the rest as it comes. From that, we get inside techniques, and outside, the choice moves from 'what shall I do today?' to 'moving that way, take head on way through'.
We've also added to this 'Matrix fighting style' which is the head moves to avoid the punch first, as, certainly with a jab, there is no time to do elegant aesthetic tenkan or whatever with full posture intact. So the head gets out of the way, the body follows, and then if it's violent enough shift, we fall, but having decided which way we go regardless of attack, we go in the direction of the lead foot, which is relatively unweighted, so can move, the result being a posture drop onto that leg - weight underside and back in control, oh and up close and personal to boot.
Of course,it looked pretty damn funny watching them do Matrix stuff to the point of falling over, but it seemed the only way to explain that they can get the posture back soon enough, after all, if you know where you're going to 'fall' you can stick a leg there and then it's not falling, it's 'dropping'.