Yesterday Frank asked me to expand a little bit more on Ishimine Sensei... Ishimine Sensei only teaches at the dojo on Saturday mornings. As far as I know he manages the JKS head office and possibly maybe another business of the late Asai Sensei. At the moment I usually only train in the evening time on Saturdays so I haven't seen a whole pile of Ishimine Sensei. His karate looks a little different than the rest of the Sensei's in the dojo... There is this really nice fluidity and flexibility to his karate which seems to be unique to him.. In terms of teaching qualities, he comes across very impressively... He doesn't really drill through the techniques alongside the rest of the students. He tends to prefer to step back and observe and he will always have something that he wants to explain at the end of each set of techniques.. For example, yesterday he was speaking about blocks such as uchi uke, soto uke and shuto uke... So obviously everybody should have one fist distance between the elbow of their blocking hand and their ribs... But Ishimine Sensei was saying that a lot of people don't contract their lat muscles and keep their shoulders down... So he got an A4 laminated sheet of paper... Put it between his elbow and ribs.... Obviously it fell straight to the floor because of the one fist gap... He then put the sheet under his arm pit and asked one of the students to pull it... They couldn't pull it down because he obviously had the correct muscles tensioned etc.. Simple explanation but effective!
Even when we had a break in between the first and second session I was practicing yokogeri-kekomi slowly in front of the mirror... Ishimine Sensei just glanced at me and he came over to me... pointed out one simple little technical point.. I tried yokogeri kekomi again and it felt so much better for me! He smiled, nodded approvingly and walked away. So Ishimine Sensei is like all of the other Sensei's in the dojo... His technique and knowledge is excellent and he has some very nice teaching qualities and good English! It's a pity that people in Europe don't really get to train with him.
So... today is Sunday and no training at the dojo. I was at my research all day but I went out for an hour to Ueno Park. Some great entertainment there including musicians, jugglers etc.. No sign of the Sakura (cherry blossom) yet! Weather has warmed up a little. It was pretty cold in Tokyo over the last few days. Looking forward to getting back in the dojo again tomorrow. This time next week I will hopefully be wrapped up with my research thesis (hopefully!)
interesting about the use of lats correctly.....lat dorsi is very interesting muscle though because it goes from shoulder all the way down to pelvis and low back......often problems around the shoulder with regard to movement control etc can be because of stiffness and shortening in the low back and vice versa....just a thought for you.
ReplyDeleteDiarmaid
ReplyDeleteThanks for the quick reply. Sounds like he would have a lot to impart.....quietly knowledgeable...pity he does not teach more!
Frank