The Kurrajong trip

David Hennesey is a Karate-Ka from the early 2000’s and was the last Shodan under Kyoshi Sensei Clutterbuck. David has moved around in the past 10 years or so which has made it challenging to train with him.

But as with any true Karate-Ka, he’s kept the fire burning and now trains with his children along with some other kids in his garage. They came to visit our dojo in May (check it out here) and we promised that we would return the favour by coming out to Kurrajong to train with them.

And that’s exactly what we did on 22^nd August.  A group of us, kids included, drove north west for our first trip to Kurrajong for a day of training and catching up.  We arrived there after lunch and met all of the Kurrajong Karate-Ka; Dave, Emma, Linda, Finn and Ben.

Kata at Kurrajong, August 2015

Then we got straight down to training.

The focus of the session was the first three Heian Kata and to get things moving we started with basics and a bit of bag work.  Then we moved on to Kihon, taking the key moves out of each Kata and practising them in the various Kihon exercises.

Once that was starting to look smooth, we went back to the Kata and rattled off a few rounds before pairing up for Bunkai.

Linda and Santina working on Heian Bunkai at Kurrajong, August 2015

Heian Sandan Bunkai at Kurrajong, August 2015

Ian and David demonstrating some Heian Sandan Bunkai at Kurrajong, August 2015.

This was when the challenge became immediately apparent.  The height difference between the kids and the adults was large and it made me wonder how we could pair everyone up.  It was great to see all the kids putting in a great effort to try and make the Bunkai work on someone almost twice their height.

To close things off we bashed out all of the Taikyoko Kata and the first four Heian, finally finishing on Tekki Shodan.

It was unbelievable how fast the time went.

Refuelling

Linda, Finn, Emma, Lucy, Amber and Ben refuelling with cake at Kurrajong, August 2015

After the training session, we headed up to David’s house, which is nestled in the hills of Kurrajong Heights, for a BBQ. There was an abundance of food to fill the empty tanks. There also appeared to be too much cake, however with 10 kids it was all gone in a flash.

The kids ran riot on their sugar rush for a few hours while we discussed the ‘good old days’ of Karate and what we hope to expect for the coming years.  Everyone agree it was great time both at the training session and the BBQ.

It’s always good to train with other Karate-Ka no matter what their style. I think it’s particularly special to train with Karate-Ka that are part of the same ‘family’ because there’s an unspoken recognition between the students. All the Kata, Kihon and etiquette are identical and the training has that special feeling about it.

We all agreed we’ll have to make this a regular event both in Kurrajong and in Sydney and plans are afoot for a Sydney visit very soon. I’d like to extend a big thank you to David for organising the training venue and to Anita for having us and for putting on a great BBQ. It was fantastic to meet you all again (or for the first time) and we look forward to training with you all again very soon.

A bit more colour in the Dojo

Congratulations goes to Bruce for his promotion to 9^th Kyu.  Before starting at Chidokan, Bruce didn’t have any martial arts experience so naturally he wondered how he’d go learning something from scratch.

Bruce has worked hard these past 6 months and had truly embraced the spirit of Karate-Do. His progression has been solid and steady and he always seems to be improving each lesson. He has developed a great foundation of technique and focus which will improve further over time.

Well done Bruce! Keep up the great work.