05

Stretch
Be sure to stretch shoulders especially since we will be carrying the katsugi okedo for majority of the class. Also stretch your legs because of the amount of standing and bending of the legs. Please take time to stretch on your own before class, but we will do light stretching together.

Katsugi Fundamentals
Uchikomi: Right, Left and Alternating. Focus on good sound and the weight of the gravity in the strike. Keep working on that left hand!

Brainteaser Strike Drill: I want to come up with some patterns to work on striking practice without it being too monotonous as the 4-8-16 drill. This drill uses both hands in each line and what makes it tricky is that once it is played with one sticking it switches hands to play with opposite sticking. This drill is not meant to be easy but it allows us to feel confident and strong in both hands and not just what is typically played with natural sticking. This was a little challenging even for me so take it slow and then try to up the tempo and focus not only on accuracy of hits in the line but also the accuracy in which hand needs to be playing. My brain hurts! haha! Photo is added below of the lines so far!

Stepping and Walking Drill: We started to add some more fancy lines to walking across the room! Started off with 4-8 lines but making sure that our stepping is staying consistent even when we play double time. Sometimes we have to hit a pattern doesn't reflect our hitting so I wanted to make sure we practice hitting in the spaces between our steps. We did a side step pattern that was tricky, the feet are moving right foot step, left tap, left foot step, right tap and then the hands are playing the second rhythm in the picture. Try to keep feeling the pulse to the beat in your steps while your hands play independently of that. We will try the pivot turn next week.

Pina Colada: we reviewed the lines and I tried to attempt to play a backline part while we drilled the line. I am still working some things out but I hope we can play something at nagashi somen, if not the whole piece maybe a moment where the classes with switch off okedo. We will see!

Clean Up

Aisatsu

Extra Notes

If you have any questions or need any clarifications feel free to email me or message here!