Dojo Update: November 10th

This has been a most amazing week for preliminary gradings, not because of the numbers of people grading, but because of the grades they were going for. After a year of very hard work, we have had three people take their first stage black belt gradings!

The first of these were on Monday with Sempai Andrew going for his preliminary black belt in sword at our ‘Dean Close’ venue. He was closely scrutinized by both our fourth dan instructors plus four other instructors all over a two hour period, culminating in an impressive display of continuous, spontaneous and creative swordwork, a daunting grading and a very well deserved pass. Sempai Andrew will now have to go to the National gradings to have his 2nd Part Blackbelt approved. Sill on the subject of sword gradings, we also had Dohigh Tam go for her purple belt in sword, also a very high pressure event, performing next to our new 1st part Blackbelt with all the instructors watching! But an excellent performance which she can be proud of, I know for certain that we all are! A very well deserved pass, both students showing the high caliber of sword and the importance we give this subject in our Dojo’s.

Tuesday as always was an oasis of calm between the two hectic Wisewarrior sessions! With the students enjoying an Aikido lesson on avoidance and flow all centered upon purely the stance, finishing with Richard San teaching the sword students how to survive the etiquette and teaching style of a formal sword lesson, stayed tuned when that one hits Tuesday nights!

The big event of the week was of course our two brown belts taking their preliminary black belts grades in Aikido and Karate on Wednesday evening. Sempai James going for the Karate grade and Sempai Dave going for Aikido. Both kicked off the evening performing their katas in front of everyone….And what a performance!! Great to watch and a brilliant finish with them both stepping up to yoi dachi (ready stance) in perfect unison, one might think they rehearsed that especially for the grading committee! For the rest of the session they both had to do class teaching tests, plus performing in front of these classes, and then in front of the whole class and the seven instructors that made up the examination committee.

Wrist locks, takedowns, combat strike combinations etc. in fact everything from yellow through to black had to be covered. I’m sure everybody who was there will agree that the last fifteen minutes were the most impressive! This involved Dohigh Kash and Andreaj acting as attackers while the Sempai’s had to perform spontaneous combat tests, dealing with attacks while following the technique orders given to them by Richard San and Tim San, with no hesitations or mistakes! Fantastic to watch, and impressing everyone there, the instructors all thought that these two had raised the bar!

Congratulations to all three on passing 1st part Black this week,  an inspiration to all in attendance. Only twenty three days to go now until the national gradings, so keep up the practice and the hard work. Judging how all the part one gradings have gone over the last month, the national gradings are going to be great day. Everybody is looking brilliant, great spirit and strong performances all round.

Speaking of great spirit it was real pleasure to see Roy San back in the dojo! A man that though many illnesses and injury has not been able to train physically for over 2 years, yet still has lessons on ‘Combat and Mind Philosophy’ every week with Richard San, he is a credit to the warrior spirit! Let us hope we can persuade him to start running philosophy classes himself soon, so we all may learn from him!

Other news, for anybody who lives under a rock, is that the nunchaku training session has been confirmed to take place on Saturday the 26th November, at the YMCA (GL50 1TP) in Cheltenham run by Tim San!

Starting at 2pm and running till 4pm, this will be suitable for beginners and intermediate level. This is once again free for all wisewarrior students. If you could let us know if you’re coming by sharing the link on your Facebook page, or by texting or calling us. Please can you also let us know if you have your own pair of Nunchaku, as any spare would be most helpful. For anybody interested who is not a wisewarrior student this amazing event will be £7 on the door.

And on the following Saturday morning (3rd December) we have been asked to do a demonstration on pure Aikido and Sword. Some of you have asked to be involved in this, so we will be contacting you to arrange a practice session before hand. Also if any of you would like to come along and watch we will be posting details of the venue in the blog nearer the time.

Finally, as our Saturday workshops are being very well received and attended, we thought that we would like to run the next one based upon a theme of YOUR choice. So we will be posting a separate blog here soon for you all to state which subject you would like. We’ll be looking at it for the New Year and whatever subject that has had the most demand will be the basis for our next workshop, which we will hopefully run in late January/early February, how good is that!

See you all next week, I’m sure it will be as busy as always, remember we are now doing syllabus on a Monday night on the run up to the gradings.