I do not have much time today so I will put down the summary of the point here. There are two good reasons why Tekki is based only on Kibadachi and the body movement is sideways. The first one is obvious and everyone knows. Kiba dachi is an excellent stance to train your stance and strengthen your legs. The second one has been a mystery: why only moving sideways? I have heard a few ideas. One was that this kata was created to fight with the wall behind you. Another was to learn the fighting method in a narrow corridor. I will talk about bunkai in Key point #3 so I will not go into this.Let me present my understanding from this unique kata. I have already mentioned about the body shifting in my previous post.
Okinawan masters wanted the beginners (this was the very first kata before Heian was invented in late 19th century) to learn how to body shift sideways before they learned how to body shift forward. Why sideways first? It is because it is physically easier to body shift that direction. I know many people do not agree with this as you feel more comfortable moving forward and moving sideways feels un-natural. But please experiment. Stand up in heisoku dachi and lean forward. You have the leg muscles to prevent the falling. Then try to lean sideways, it is a lot harder to prevent falling sideways. Believe it or not, ninja of medieval Japan found this running method useful. Regardless, by "falling" to the side one learned how to body shift quickly. Once it is learned, the students went on to Bassai Dai that has the forward body falling in its first move. I must say this old time curriculum of learning the fast body shifting is amazing.In fact there is another reason for kiba dachi which is not too emphasized in the most dojo. Kiba dachi is classified as one of the outside tension stance. However, by moving sideways one learns how to tense the inner muscles of upper legs. This again helps in fast body shifting.I will cover the key point of bunkai in #3, hopefully tomorrow.
