Discussion on IS08_fback_Kata

[Amanda]

delta: bunkai?

we didn't work on each individual student getting their kata down (all
the moves) by heart as much as we have in the past. this might have
had something to do with the amt of time we alloted (or didn't) to
practicing kata. we might want to improve this too.

[Dean]

Speaking of Bunkai...I've been reading this book, by Sang H. Kim, "The
Way of the Master: Teaching in Martial Arts." Pretty good (it's the
book I read a passage from about not brining in personal stuff and not
talking too much to explain something) read. It also presents an
interesting way of teaching Kata: 1) go through 3 moves. 2) intro a
bunkai to those three moves. 3) practice the bunkai with a partner.
4) do the 3 moves in the Kata again. Obviously, we could vary this so
we could get through the whole Kata in a reasonable amount of time,
but it's a neat idea. We could experiment too...

[Dean]

Also, I noticed this Intersession we weren't able to prepare the
students as well for the tournament as we have previous years (this
builds off Amanda's comment below). If it only means the kids do half
a kata, I'd rather we teach them the first half really solid and they
can do it convincingly and with power, rather than not being able to
focus on any one part and as a result, not being able to prepare the
students as well.

Perhaps this would be fixed by properly invoking the "spirit of the
martial arts" as mentioned by Brian or Master Bruce, but if not, this
is another option.

[Dean]

Something else we could do (and i feel super stupid for not thinking
of this before) is to overweight the kata section with people. As in,
I know that we had the higher ranks rotating around with the groups,
but on one day (maybe the day before the tournament, or perhaps
Tuesday so they have some feedback before the last day before the
tournament) send all the high ranks over to help the kata person split
the students into small groups. That way everyone gets a chance to do
their kata individually with feedback, while wasting a minimal amount
of time (like, having the students sit there and watch).

I think we should do FK1 one or two times at the beginning and end of
each morning too, just for the extra practice. Also, colored belts
are required to do their kata 'refresher' on sunday night. I'm
looking at you two, Jen and Brian. :-)

[Amanda]

Re- overweighting the kata group,
another thing to do would be to have 4 groups, and have two of them at
the kata station
then you have less time for the other two things, but you get more
kata (which might be more important, depends on your philosophy)
downside: more ppl doing kata at once... but you should have at least
three ppl who know what they're doing if you have one pi and two si's,
at least.