San shin in Japanese translates three hearts, or mind, body, and spirit. San shin is meant to help martial artists in the field of karate pull all three hearts together thus making them a better martial artist, as none of them can survive without the others. San shin is divided up into 5 different "exercises." Chi no kata, sui no kata, hi no kata, fu no kata and ku no kata.
Chi no kata is Earth. In Chi no kata, along with all the other san shin, you are in boby no kamae, with your hand on your belt and your hand pointing out with a natural bend to it. In Chi no kata, your foot and arm which is forward move back, as the hand on your belt swings back and, stepping forward with your back foot, make a throwing motion, as if you were trying to gently throw an egg over a huge wall. You then repeat that on the opposite side and flow back and forth. Sui no kata is Water. For sui no kata, instead of stepping backwards with your front foot, you step to the side with your back foot and make a circling motion with it, going with the flow of the motions, you then do omote shuto to the person's neck and shoulder area. For Hi no kata, or fire, you do the same as sui no kata, only instead of omote shuto, which makes a lassoing motion, you do ura shuto, which makes what I like to think of as a "lightning" motion, as you bring your hand and arm across your body and above your head and shoulder and strike down like lightning. Fu no kata, or wind, makes the circling motion like sui no kata and hi no kata but somewhat like chi no kata, the arm swings up and does shikan ken, a type of punch where you strike with your knuckles. For the final one, ku no kata, the person swings their arm around again but then brings their other arm to do mitsubishi( or distraction) and stomp kicks, stepping down and doing the same on the other side.
After San shin, we worked on two different types of "walking."The first one "duck walking" you do while kneeling. Having live toes, you bring one knee forward and bending down, pivot on it, moving the other knee forward. One of the most important things to remember though is to keep your foot underneath you when you pivot and not have it dragging behind you. After duck walking, we did yoko aruki, or side-to-side walking. Whichever direction your walking in, you have that foot pointing forward and make a small step with the other, stepping just past the forward pointing foot. You then make a large step with the forward pointing foot etc.
But, for the actual class, we worked on all the different types of hook punch defenses. We first worked on a gold belt technique, where, when the attacker does the hook punch, the person being attacked blocks, elbow strikes to the side of the head, and snap kicks to the stomach.
After that activity, we moved to an orange belt technique where the person defends the punch by stepping to the inside and striking the attacker's arm with an outside block. They then step in with the back foot and strike with an omote shuto to the side of the neck then a stomp kick to the midsection.
We then worked on the purple belt move osote geti/osoto gake. In this technique, when the attacker comes with the hook punch, the person defends themselves by stepping away with the back foot and stopping the punch with an outside block. Next, they grab the opposite arms shoulder and, swinging the back foot behind the attacker, sweeping their feet out and taking them to the ground. I say osoto geti/osoto gake, because osoto geti, you swing your leg right through their leg while osoto gake, places the leg at the crook of their leg and the hand on the opposite shoulder pushed the person down.
The next technique we did was a brown belt technique called sankaku jime, a triangular choke. In the technique, instead of blocking the attackers hook punch, the person merely ducks down under the arm, bringing their inside arm around to the person's shoulder. Looping around to the back of them, they then grab their forearm and flex their arm, causing the person's bloodflow to be cut off.
The next technique we did was a red belt hook punch defense. In the technique, when the attacker punched, the person would, in one continuous motion, block their punch and grab, place their hand behind the attacker's head, and spin around pushing their head to the ground. This was probably one of my favorite because its a really good technique for practicing forward shoulder rolls, which I still somewhat struggle with.
The final two techniques were black belt techniques. The first one when the attacker punched, the person did an outside block, bent the elbow and pressed it to their chest, moved around to the back of the attacker and stepped to the side and sunk. The second was against a knife. The person being attacked was in hira ichimonji no kamae. As the person with the knife comes in to strike, the other moves to the side and makes a sideways u with their body, moving their hips back and arms forward. They then grab the hand of the person with the knife and pull them to the ground.
I was pretty excited about doing one of the orange belt moves, as I have a slight feeling I'm going to be promoted in the next month or so, plus the fact that I love omote and ura shuto. Tomorrow is my birthday so I probably won't be on but I have karate again Monday night so I'll probably see you guys (if anyone is reading this) then.
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