Jion kata 1st Move In Detail
Jion kata 1st Move
In this short tutorial Sensei Huckle explains the first move of Shotokan karate brown belt kata Jion.
Sensei talks about contraction and expansion and about bouncing the arms and driving back with the left leg, whilst at the same time driving forward with the uchi uke and gedan barai.
On the first move of Jion, try and keep the body weight forward and drive the left leg back sharply like a kick.
An explosive start and stop is the secret with this karate move.
Try not to start slowly, then speed up. It’s a fast start, then a dead stop!
Arms move very fast initially, as the arms move, drive off the right leg and shoot the left leg back.
You move down and back, not back and down.
Keep everything in close, try not to let the arms travel too far outside the body on completion of the technique.
The feeling is simultaneous block and counter, there are many different applications to the first move of jion, lower block and upper cut, inside bloack and low punch and even a throw is also one of the applications.
Jion is one of the brown belt kata in many shotokan karate Dojo, it’s a strong kata and is an important part of development from brown belt to black belt.
On this first move, try and use the whole body, legs and arms to work together, to produce a very dynamic and explosive first move to the kata.
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The 1st Move Of Kata Jion

The video above focuses on just the first move of Jion, please check the links below for more Jion kata tutorials. We may have more than one tutorial for each section.
Jion Kata Moves 2 To 11 In Detail
Jion Kata Moves 12 To 17 In Detail
Jion Kata Moves 18 to 22 In Detail