A very good friend is training martial arts with her two children. During one of several conversations over the U.S. 4th of July holiday, we talked about interesting things we have seen in karate.
I share this because my most amazing moment has shaped my training these past twenty some-odd years. And I’m forming my next year’s training goals with this memory fresh in mind.
It happened at an International Shotokan Karate Federation summer training camp. We were training in a probably circa 1960’s high school gymnasium. Just like at (I suspect) thousands of high school gyms in the south we were on a wooden floor, large gable fans pulling stifling Mississippi coastal air through the length of the building.
The Japanese guest instructor was demonstrating a kata (hyung) to a packed house and decided to continue on the raised stage whose wall extended back at one end. With beautifully low stances he moved toward the crowd.
As he turned facing away and extending his back leg toward us to finish his front stance … his back foot missed the stage … it was suspended in air. It was part of a front stance, the kind the Japanese styles are famous for. He simply looked back, pulled his rear foot onto the stage floor and adjusted his stance forward.
No reaching over for balance, no stumbling, no teetering.
And he continued as if nothing extraordinary had happened.
I’ve looked for his name in my training notes from the mid-1980’s, but I didn’t record it. I wonder if other witnesses understood what he had done.
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