Some movements in kata just make absolutely no sense! In Goju Ryu's Saifa kata we explain the reason for looking sideways when performing a knee strike. gkcglobalshop.com/collections...
The beauty of Kata, is poetry in motion when performed with such fluidity, like water adapting to the shape of the container. GKCgoju unpacks Eastern concepts with western pragmatism. No one does it better.
Thanks so much for this. Saifa has been one of my favorite kata's for years (Kyokushin version) ive always wondered about the sideways look and asked many times about it but no one ever came up with a rational explanation but after seeing your bunkai Sensei it all makes sense now. Thanks again Osu
Common chin na practise is, to grap his wrist with your free hand( hence both of our hands at the same place) and roll with your captured hand very fast up into a lock against this fixation. (The lock is, as if you were stretching your own fingers downward. )The roll from deep below up being the wave, we do with our tanden and legs in kata. That lifts him into the cradle arm lock. His elbow than lies in the elbowbend of our arm he initially seized. ( Mirros our connected arm pull position in kata...) If it fails in the beginning, you go to the common punch defence our your ideas. The same basic application can be seen at the beginning of Nijushiho. But Saifa shows it much more detailed and closer to the application movement.
Shows that people should not rush to condemn movements in martial arts that they don't understand and haven't practised. This also applies to Aikido which uses similar training methods and movements.