Discovering Chinto Kata could be a speed pump.

Wednesday, May 10, 2023

Discovering Chinto Kata could be a speed pump.

If you check out the attached url’s from my blog you will find out how I was taught Chinto Kata.

https://isshin-concentration.blogspot.com/search?q=Salisbury

https://isshin-concentration.blogspot.com/2016/05/the-wheel-turns-on-chinto-memories.html

Auguse of 1975 I first learn the beginning of Chinto from Lewis Sensei the last night I was a member of the Salisbury dojo. I also received my greenbelt that night. Then a year of practice where I lived at Scranton. That next summer I took my vacation down as Salisbury and between visits to the Salisbury dojo, the Princess Ann dojo , the Dover dojo and back to the Salisbury dojo, somehow I learnt the remainder of the form. Returning to Scranton I continued my solitary practice of Chinto.

A year later Charles Murray moved near Scranton and I began training with him. He told me to keep my kata Seisan through Chinto as I had learned in Salisbury, He told my remaining kata studies would be his variations of the other kata.

In 1979 I began training youth through the Scranton Boys Club and for the next 6 years I taught Chinto as I had been taught. Then in 1985 moving to Derry I began a new program there, one for kids and one for adults at the Derry Boys and Girls Club. When appropriate I taught them my Chinto.

By 1988 my two senior adult students were running Chinto with me. As they solidly had the kata I would run it with them, unfortunately not watching them because I knew they knew the kata.

But one evening I watched them, instead of performing the kata with them.

What I saw was Chinto being performed at super speed. They were not incorrect but I knew they were going too fast.. I remarked to them they were doing Chinto too fast and I went to show them how it shoud be done by doing it by myself.

Of course I went and did it faster they did it.

Now I had no one looking at my kata since 1979, and this was a wake up.

So I put on my thinking cap and went through what was happening in my mind.

What I realized was that Chinto was functioning like a speed pump, causing you to go faster and faster. Then say at a tournament with your adrenalin flowing you would go even faster.

Realizing this I began to work with them to practice more slowly, so if they competed their adrenalin making them go faster would still be slower than before.

The larger lesson was I realized I needed to observe, even what my senior students were doing and continually assist them to make adjustments. A lesson I kept re-learning for decades.

This is Mike Cassidy a 2nd dan performing Chinto in 1992

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dAOFNKpjpHU