Shoot in 4K ,Karate World Champion Miki Nakamachi on 10/19/2014 , Tokyo , Japan. ★Rent and Buy "KURO-OBI WORLD MOVIES" vimeo.com/channels/kuroobiwor...
Miki has a solid performance, this is JKA traditional shotokan kata, Ms. Usami perform difference style, In traditional Karate we do not compare our performances ... I think ....
Not bad overall but two observations: 1) She doesn't seem to fully utilize her center (tanden) fully when applicable, that is what defined Shotokan since day one. 2) The final strike with both knife hands appears to be rather mild, I was taught these two strikes were on the collarbones so I always do a full wind-up.
Good but if I were her sensei, I would expect more from her... lower stances, more kime (even in declaring the name of the kata), the posture of her head/neck is not straight/aligned... she should lower her chin... I don't know how many dan she has but standards for black belts should be higher... and I'm not talking about Luca Valdesi levels, 'cause that is quite high
She trains at the JKA headquarters!!! One of her sensei is Tatsuya Naka!!!! Then she has no excuses: she MUST do better than in this video... I watched again and I could not see the energy/kime... it was a sequence of correct movements (with the few mistakes I pointed out) but I couldn't see/feel the kime... there was so little kime that she could keep the mouth shut while performing... she was little tired at the end, so she didn't give 100%. That's a performance that I can do, as a first dan not trained at the JKA hq, but she has to do better!!!
