Contact Wrapup

We finished this week’s theme in kid’s class with kicks.  Since the theme was contact, that means the students were kicking each other in the shins, knees and thighs.  With light contact, of course.  Focus pads and heavy bags are no substitute for the strange experience of actually making contact with another human being.

Is it okay for children to be kicking each other in Kung Fu class?  It depends on who you ask and I suspect that everyone who answers will be able to justify their own answer.  For me as a teacher, I feel it’s my job to slowly introduce students into the martial world, one step at a time.  Contact is part of that world.

Introducing contact slowly means starting with a stationary target and making “kiss touch” contact.  Then, if things are going well, it means moving on to striking against a moving target.  That’s how far we got today and the hope is that now if these students get dinged in the leg during sparring or if they walk into the edge of a table by accident, it’s less of a big deal – they’ve been there before.