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Message: <blockquote data-quote="takyris" data-source="post: 698497" data-attributes="member: 5171">One kind of neat thing that we do at my school is to take a technique and make it our own.  This really makes us think about those "embellishments" and what they really did for the kata.  In some cases, I ended up adding additional movements to my self-defense techniques because I proved to my teacher that the technique as it stood had defensive gaps or dangers.  The dangers are pretty minor, and for a beginner learning the technique, it's not worth the difficulty required to teach the more advanced form.  Now that we've advanced as students, though, we can reclaim the techniques and put our personal emphasis on it.Example:Someone in front of you grabs your right wrist with their left hand.Original technique: Step forward and out at 45-degree angle with right leg, swinging right arm across my body.  Then do a chop down along my right arm with my left hand as I pull my right hand back (like drawing a bow).  This wipes the arm off.  Then we punch the guy a couple times. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />I asserted that too much time passed between the time of the first attack and the time I damaged the attacker.  Body positioning removed the right hand as a threat, but he could still kick me.  Therefore, in my new interpretation of the technique:Step forward as before, but as soon as I've planted my right leg, I swing my left leg forward and strike their shin, checking any possible kick before it happens.  Since I've already got the leg up now, I add a knife-edge (edge of foot on the side) kick to their far leg as I do the wipe-off-the-arm move.  The new positioning of my attacker because of these kicks requires me to retarget the punches.As a result, the technique is at once completely different and completely the same.  A new student who knew the original technique might see me as doing it with a flourish, an embellishment.  I would certainly only teach them the standard, original version of the technique, of course -- the technique is taught to new students, and that kind of hop is tough for a beginner.Anyway, that's how we gradually learn and relearn techniques at my school.  My teacher is always making me relearn techniques, showing me things that I didn't see before -- or things that he didn't show me because I wasn't ready for it.-Tacky</blockquote>

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