The Dojo Diary: Sweeps & Throws on the Tatami

A number of students set out on Sunday 24th February 2019 to Sensei Mandie Read of Dudley Shukokai Karate‘s dojo to have a training sensei on the mats. The dojo ias fully kitted out with tatami mats and other equipment giving us the perfect opportunity to practise throws, sweeps and competition kata. We covered basic throws, reaps and sweeps with escapes from grabs and other scenarios.

The Dojo Diary – It’s kicking at Longbridge (W/E…

Just a few short videos of the first class at longbridge on Wednesday night with the juniors and seniors working on Keri Waza (kicking techniques). Starting off slowly, then building up speed, this helps students guage distance, use correct technique and control when striking a target. Still a work in progress but a good effort by all.

The second class was an improtu kobudo (weapons) class by request with the seniors working on the bo kata shushi no kon.

On Monday night at Weoley Castle, we had a few surprise visitors with some old friends and former students of Shihan Cummins, Daniel Eccles and Yvonne Skalban dropping in and sensei Richard Amuzu coming by for a bit of bo practice.

The Dojo Diary – Weoley Castle Dojo (W/E 09/02/2019)

As they say a picture speaks a thousand words and this entry in our Dojo Diary series of posts is going to take advantage of that old adage. Here are a few photos and videos from the Weoley Castle dojo on the 7^th February 2019 where the session concentrated on kicking and sparring with Sensei Sue Hession.

The Dojo Diary – A week in training (13/01/19…

This week at the Longbridge dojo on Wednesday Sensei Sue took everyone through their paces teaching what was new kata for some whilst also preparing some students for an upcoming competition. Sensei Richard took the opportunity to continue along the same theme and work on a kata the students were already familiar with, Bassai Dai.

It is always important to revisit and constantly practise everything we have learnt as well as learning new things as we progress along our karate journey. To that end on the advanced class we concentrated on the details of the kata trying to iron out any little mistakes that inevitably creep in to our kata and explain some of the common variations that are prevalent plus examine in detail each technique and possible applications for them.

On Saturday we continued with Nijushiho, going through the kata again several times and letting the students explore some of the bunkai with partner work. We then moved onto Bassai Dai a kata that everyone was familiar with but concentrating on partner work with the pairs trying to explore the bunkai themselves in order to get everyone thinking about why they do each part of the kata and how they interpret it. We finished the session with a look at each individual’s grading kata.