Blogs are a pain.
They are though aren't they? Why should I take the time to write and check something at the risk of people doing checks on it afterwards when I can just record a video, make all the grammatical and vocabulary mistakes I can and no one will pick me up about it later!
And this is why (and yes, you can start a sentence with "And") I started using Youtube to record more of my thoughts and experiences on Budo. But, I still think it's worth taking the time to write something which has been considered and is carefully put together...I just wish someone would do that for me.
For those of you who have protected yourselves from listening to my droning on, you might want to torture yourselves with the complete and short library of C&C-based videos here:
You may have also heard me talk about C&C in interviews with Patrick Suen in his strongly-progressing "Inside Look" podcast:
https://youtu.be/P5H6rnFQYIk
Anyway, enough self-promotion, I wanted to simply share a tangible output/outcome from this focus on C&C. Any though we have started coming out of lockdown from COVID-19, I continue to hold Zoom coaching sessions with my European students and friends. On one evening, I asked my student from Hungary, Gergely Vass, to focus on his performance of Mae using all of the aspects of C&C that I had been coaching the guys with for the previous few months.
Naturally, just like everyone else, it wasn't perfect, the direction of furikaburi and the final position of chiburi still needed some concentration but this was such a substantial difference to the way that Gergely was doing Mae a few months previously. You will note that the form is perhaps a little slower than some people of his grade would perform it - this is exactly the point though. By eliminating the focus on speed and power he was able to produce a near-perfect nukitsuke and pre-cut position in furikaburi. These were the main points that I wanted him to work on.
Anyway, enough talk, I will let you be the judge. Please find the video here:
Thank you to Gergely who allowed me to use this video for this post.