And what, in your opinion, is the point of tensho?

In my practice the purpose of Tensho is exactly the same as the purpose of Sanchin, to break was stands before me.

pleasantly,

Let's see what dandjurdjevic has to say.

Better still, let's see what Miyagi has to say.

BTW Victor, that was the purpose, not the point.

For Tensho, long before I had the chance to learn the form I had studied a series of Chinese Short Range striking from my friend Ernest Rothrock.

When I learnt Tensho I immediately realized they were just tactical application of those techniques with the principles underlying them, specifically how one parry turns into the following strike.

In the sense today I'm only concerned with Sanchin as a superior way to disrupt an attack, and see Tensho in the same way, I find no difference in my practice.

I was given a rough description of the point of tensho vs. sanchin. I'll try to convey my instructor's thoughts from many years ago.

Sanchin is a hard kata for young people. Sanchin is to develop conditioning and to add power in your punches. As you progress through Goju your body goes through changes. You get older and tensho serves a better purpose. Tensho develops the "soft" power. You should be able to generate more relaxed power in a shorter distance by now.

Basically, sanchin is Go/hard and tensho is the Ju/soft aspect of Goju.

I learned sanchin as a whitebelt and six years later as a blackbelt.

, thus saith the whiteboy