Students from the past, again

At the start of the month we were contacted by Darren Garth. Darren is a Shodan who trained at the Cairns dojo under Soshi Sensei Hudson (Renshi Sensei Hudson back then) during the 1990’s and early 2000’s.   Darren took over the this dojo when Soshi moved to Brisbane.

I was fortunate enough to be at his Shodan grading and vividly remember the demonstration he and Sempai Parker gave.  Their demo was on knife attacks and how to resolve them. They showed a few technical solutions before finishing off with a more “direct” approach; a Chudan-Mae-Geri-Kekomi.

Sempai Parker and Sempai Garth

On the same day we heard from Darren we also got an email from Frank.  Frank also trained with Chidokan in the 1990’s and early 2000’s mainly under Soshi Sensei up at the Cairns dojo. He also trained under Kyoshi Sensei Clutterbuck at the Hombu dojo for some time.

Frank has started training with us and it’s great to have him back.

This month’s training

Our training during May covered most of the syllabus and we went through all the basic techniques and Kihon.  Our primary focus was Shute Uke and in particular, Kokutsu-Dachi.  Kokutsu-Dachi poses a number of problems for new students, not only from a balance perspective, but also anatomically.  It’s a tricky stance to learn and takes a LONG time to become comfortable with.  That’s why we don’t teach it first! However, it’s an crucial stance to our style and appears in nearly all our Kata.

As with all things in Karate, the secret lies in practice. Over time the stance develops and becomes very powerful however, the journey can be a painful and frustrating one.  And that’s why we will be spending a lot more time on it during the coming months.

We also spent some time on kicks, looking specifically at Mae-Geri-Kekomi and Kebanashi as well as Yoko-Geri-Kekomi.  Kicks are an integral part of Karate and factor heavily in our Kata.  A number of other styles use a huge array of kicks, from swinging kicks to high kicks, axe kicks and so on.

The kicks in our syllabus are not what you’d call flamboyant however, they do all draw from the same mechanics, meaning once a student has understood this, they have the foundation for the full syllabus of kicks.

We’ve started to make great progress this month and hopefully, within a few more months, we’ll see the benefits of our hard work.

One year on

Finally, May was an huge month for our dojo.  The 7th May was our one year anniversary.

A complete wrap up for the first year is coming soon.