Completion of waza is never the point of impact

Daily self-training - Saturday, June 15th, 2024.

 The near completion of a waza is the conclusion of the critical phase; that is, the end point is 'through (or past) the respective target'. In this photo I'm doing Bassai Dai kata, 'a fractionally before the completion of hidari tate-shuto chudan-uke'. Following this moment the hiki-te pulls back fully as the uke arm action concludes is sideward course.

Once completed this is also the position from which to execute the next waza. In this case, migi seiken chudan choku-zuki.

In sum, and to quote Abe Sensei, "...each waza must at least be able to break a board". What was meant by this was rather literally 'breaking something' that maai is not merely surface level. This is a definitive difference between sports karate and karate as bujutsu.

This is an important technical characteristic of the IKS (International Karate Shotokan).

押忍!!

André

© André Bertel. Oita City, Japan (2024).