Well two things of interest happened in Cheltenham this week. Firstly the Olympic torch arrived on Wednesday and traveled though the centre of the town, making a couple of students and one instructor late for the Wednesday night session, held up by Olympians no less!
The second was Wisewarrior Training launching this new website! So even if you are reading this blog feed by facebook or twitter then please check out our new look site at: www.wisewarrior.co.uk
This was how the weeks training looked!
Combat club saw the return of our dynamic duo, James san and Dave san this week and they started things off with a bang. Jumping straight from the warm up into our focus mitt routines, with a quick refresher from last weeks routines then on to the latest in the series. There are 10 routines in total, covering a wide variety of punches, kicks and strikes.
The next set of routines will be geared toward slightly longer combat routines that require no pad work, aimed at being worked through with a training partner. These routines will further develop hand-eye coordination as well as laying down sound combative/self defence principles, but above all – a really great cardio based workout!!!!
BAMA Advanced Class, Mondays 7.45pm
Advanced punching techniques was the subject this week for the high grade Monday class. Tim san was exploring the varied flight paths for punches and had the class hurling strikes from every which angle!
It just goes to show there is more to punches than just swapping your arms over.
Next week the advanced class will be looking at some aikido partner work with Richard san as he takes them through some wrist and arm locks.
After a quick check of Battle Kata from last week, the spirit of the form ,combined with technical challenges is still falling a little short with the sword group, so we will have to come back to that again soon!
But Blue belt is beckoning soon for Dohigh Tam, so we had to move on this week and cover the exciting powerful floor pattern of ‘Uttaka Yon Kiri’. This most dynamic of floor forms allows the student full range movement to create the energy of the cut, yet still demands full control of the detail so typical with floor forms. Challenging lessons ahead for our students who wish to grade soon!
Reflective Aikido, Tuesdays, 8.30pm
It was a real pleasure to watch the students ‘flowing’ each other to the floor in this weeks Reflective Aikido session. We as instructors have been aware that doing ‘full’ Aikido takedowns similar to the Wednesday Aikido-Te sessions, might interrupt and spoil the harmony of this most fluid and tranquil session of the week!
Yet with Richard San explaining the technique of the takedown plus the ability to blend with the floor it became a wonderful natural event, a natural conclusion to an Aikido movement.
Having supportive grades like Sempai Kash and Dohigh Wills really helped the session go ‘smoothly’ for the beginners.
Well done to the class.
Japanese Sword, Tuesdays, 9.30pm
The ‘Art’ of the draw and the resheath was the Japanese Sword lesson theme this week. This was great for those new people in the class, who are starting to look good with their cuts and movements but have yet to grasp the details of this complicated part of the sword art.
But after covering 3 basic draws and resheaths, they were able to follow Richard San through a simple sequence of draw, cut and resheaths.
With no patterns to learn and grade in, this class has a wonderful relaxed pressure-free feel to it.
BAMA Karate and Aikido Te Class, Wednesdays, 6.45pm
Unlike previous weeks which all had a big element of group based partner work this week we really only touched upon the group session for the very start and finish of the session. The rest of the time was spent with some quality private tuition. For those taking the June BAMA grades the focus was very much of course on Kata work, with lots of technical corrections and pointers towards improving performance. For those not grading this time round we managed to cover a fair bit of syllabus work and will be looking forward to seeing you all grade next time in September (Check Wisewarrior events HERE).
The exception to all this kata and syllabus work was one group that was working specifically towards our last final part one gradings of this month. Despite holding a full time job and devoting a lot of time towards a new career as a comic book writer with three national expos this month alone, Dohigh Jon has still managed to find time to practice all his Katas!
Inspired by last weeks gradings he approached Sensei Richard and asked about the possibility of his grading this time round, although he had missed the deadline……and it worked!……..and he’s worked! So under the watchful eyes of a 4th Dan and 2nd Dan, he did and excellent part one grading. Applications of kata once again in the new format, with the more reality base street defense feel to it was demanded, and a great grading resulted! Well done Dohigh Jon!
So we hoped you made it to the ‘Art of Kata’ session, full write up in ‘Spotlight’ and the ‘What’s on’ blogs!
See you in the dojo.
Well you can’t have a discussion about ‘Karma’ and ‘inevitability’ without the big ‘D’ (death) cropping up!! Always a biggy in philosophy chats that one!
So on that note, I would like to share a response from one of the members of the group who tried to answer the question about death set to him, I hope you find it as inspiring as I did! (Richard San)
“It struck me that ‘Death’ is where this reality; ‘true reality’ and ‘self’ all meet, like passing though the eye of a needle. That Death is as much life as anything else (Ying and Yang if you like) and therefore Death is not a messenger or collector of beings, but an intrinsic part of the whole….so this is how I answered your question about Death you posed in the session…”
“Thank-you for the blessing and privilege of life and thank you for the time that I have had. Thank-you for allowing me the gift of dieing whilst conscious (hopefully).
Part of me would like to ask simply if I have managed to do more good than harm in my life – but the more important question is, please can you give us guidance and help, so as to understand how to live with you, free from fear, so that through acceptance and understanding we may live at peace with ourselves and understand our true Nature and Purpose”.
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