Thursday, July 16, 2009

Grading over. Time to refresh.

Here we go again. Gradings are done and dusted. Congratulations to all who passed and are now a step closer to Black belt. Special shout out to Kyle, Michael and Nicholas for grading to 9th kyu. Excellent work boys!! Well done also to Haydn and Meg from our Whyalla dojo on grading to Shodan....now the work begins!!

A great weekend with plenty of information for our members to take back to their dojos and start putting into practice. Sensei took the Black and Brown belts through the finer points of Tekki Shodan and Bassai Dai on Friday night and had us sprinting to get back to our spots to commence each kata. Body position and alignment was also covered in detail, along with a few practical demonstrations that were real eye openers. Climbing up on someone when they are in the correct stance certainly reinforces the importance of body / hip / leg position. Risborg Sensei took a few knocks much to the amusement of the students.

Saturday saw all grades work through the first four Heian Kata at great depth. Bunkai was demonstrated in various different points of each kata. The varying types of moves that can be interpreted in kata is very interesting, requiring many hours of dedicated study and showed the depth of knowledge required to reach the higher grades. Sunday morning was a fantastic study of defence against the mighty Mai Geri. We had a dozen different techniques to get our head around then try to accomplish them at pace. Great fun. Everyone enjoyed the sweeping take-downs in particular.

Sunday afternoon was grading time and we had our first students from Marion Dojo going for their yellow belts (9th Kyu). All the boys did an exceptional job. I was more nervous for them than at my own grading. Their hard work paid off and all passed with flying colours. Congratulations to all our members who were thrown into the pressure cooker of grading. You all did yourself and JKA South Australia proud. Oss

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