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BAMA Advanced Class, Mondays 7.45pm
This Monday was a very exciting session, as Tim San started teaching the new 1st Dan Kata! This kata will look great when performed by black belts, but it really comes alive as a partner pattern, it contains all the techniques and skill sets a Shodan Ho needs to understand for their next level, from nerve strikes, floor work, kick counters etc. Its for students of Aikido Te as well as Karate, and is also designed as a great set piece for 1st part gradings plus demo’s. This awesome kata continues this week!!
Ken-Kai-Ryu, Mondays, 7.45pm
This week, the sword class looked at bokken work, not just as kumite competition type bouts, but as a way to free up the movements of formal sword. For in bokken work we have a greater sense of the combative nature of sword, for here you are trying too ‘hit’ your opponent, so each movement you make has an objective. So when we went back to the students formal Ken-Kai-Ryu patterns, they soon began to come alive to all grades.
A great session that ended with even lower grades doing fantastic Tandem katas.
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Holistic martial Arts Class, Tuesdays 6.30pm
The ‘Soft form’ of the aikido type movements continued this week, with Richard San showing how ‘high circle locks’ and ‘ open and closed deflection’ movements build up to a very energetic work out, these movements are called ‘Waves upon a shore’ and are the first movements of soft form pattern, and portray artistically the restless nature of the ocean.
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Reflective Aikido, Tuesdays, 8.30pm
Almost an ‘Art of Kata’ lesson this week with Richard San, the great gift of Tuesdays ‘Reflective Aikido’ session is that its not just about a series of locks and holds or takedowns, but that the classes actually concentrate on the art of movement that makes all these things work! So when Richard San asked the class to take this knowledge and try to understand it, and try to use it, not just as an abstract idea, but as a way to improve their performances in all of their katas they have learnt in all other classes. All that can be said is; great things happened that night!
Richard San hopes to see this understanding continue when he next watches those students!
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Japanese Sword, Tuesdays, 9.30pm
Well we promised last week to get back to sword, but the Aikido class was just too exciting, and over ran, maybe next week!
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BAMA Karate and Aikido Te Class, Wednesdays, 6.45pm
Well the fact that many of the higher grades have been attending the advance combat class on Monday evenings meant that this Wednesday the highest grade below instructor was a purple belt! The senseis, ever ready to seize an opportunity, were able to ignore the traditional advance/beginner split that we normally operate on a Wednesday, and instead got some great work done with each individual.
Sensei Tor led an excellent group partner session, while students were taken out of the group to work on the technical aspect of their syllabus, under the watchful eye of a fourth Dan. The group sets were all based upon the wazas and sections from advanced katas, so useful to everybody wether they needed basic skill sets, or more advanced combat work.
The evening ended with a combat display by one of our beginners, so well done to Kohigh Emma as the ‘defender’, and we hope that the ‘attackers’ understood the importance of their part of the display, especially as we were able to show them some of the video clips from our last display with the high grades. So maybe we will have the next generation of display teams coming up soon!
So a busy class and even though we’re not allowed to talk about it, there were already elements of project ‘Mayhem’ creeping into the evening.
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Always happy to see a new member in the philosophy group, and this week saw one of our new blackbelts drop into the group, as always a new person brings new ideas and different perspectives. Its also important to remember that there are no grades in philosophy, Richard San guides and teaches the class through lessons he was taught and with what he has understood himself about Zen, but everyone was born Zenish so to speak, so we can all contribute to the understanding of each other. So what did our new member contribute to the session? ‘Transferable ego’!
We are all still working that one out!!
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