Back in the spring of 1995 Garry Gerossie from Concord NH sought me out. We had met at some NH tournaments but really did not know each other. He told me he was a student of Sherman Harrill, who had been a student of Shimabuku Tatsuo, alongside another marine, Tom Lewis – my original instructor. Garry was inviting me to attend a seminar on Isshinryu he was hosting for Sherman Harrill at his school. I was flying away the day after the clinic to attend a business conference, but I told him I would attend.
That seminar was so eye opening at what Sherman Harrill was about. It was jam packed with Isshinryu kata applications, one variation after another. I was astonished at what he was showing and did my best to retain what I could. Well inundated with applications by the lunch break, I an everyone there were more than a little brain dead after lunch as Sherman continued his application presentations.
Suddenly I watched one of his presentations, and I instantly became awake, or whatever term is appropriate for becoming most engaged. Sherman was showing a drill using the lower body movement of Naifanchi kata, the use of the stepping of the form. Then he began to move to another application, but I remember asking to see that again, and Sherman complied.
After that clinic, actually as I was flying to Nevada the next day, I began to take notes of what I could remember. I wrote down 26 of those kata applications.
A year later Garry gifted me a video of that clinic, and as I reviewed it discovered that day Sherman showed us more that 100 techniques in 6 hours.
These were the notes I kept of that Naifanchi stepping drill.
1. Attacker is grappling
with both arms preparing for a knee strike
a. Left cross kick to inside
right shin, attacker drops the right foot.
b. Right cross kick to the
inside of the left shin , then step thru in Naifanchi stance
c.
Left cross kick to outside of left shin
d. Right cross kick to the
inside left shin followed by a right turning kick to outside of the attackers
waist (or outside their thigh)
e.
Left cross kick to outside left shin followed by step thru
in naifanchi stance
f.
Right inside cutting kick
This drill is working on using the cross kicks in an
inward slicing motion. When grappling such a technique will off balance the
opponent, making it much easier to force them down by twisting in the grapple.
The drill works the full range of lower leg attacks. Section d. in particular
is a double strike, when to the side of the thigh, this can cause loss of the
leg function for the attacker, too.
Naifanchi shows the angles to use when executing these kicks into the
opponents leg.
These may be either
straight in at 45 degrees or as sloppy side hooking kicks kicking back from the
opponents rear
Then this is what I
viewed on that VHS tape.
Note: they were filmed in the club mirror, and the techniques are being
done backwards.
It is important to note clinic attendees were not Sherman’s students, for the most part. He would demonstrate the application and then everyone would work on that application, then he would move onto another one. It was always up to the attendee to remember what was shown and work on it further until they made it theirs.
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