On Saturday November 13th 2016, almost one hundred CFTS students met at the newly-named Kempston Challenge Academy for the latest in a long series of courses. To save time on the afternoon of courses we this year have sold tickets in advance. This saves queueing to pay, sign in and have licences stamped. Students still have to sign in and stamp their own licence. It is quicker but towards the start time we still have a bit of a bottleneck yet with this method we managed to begin on time.
Renshi opened the course by introducing Shihan Andi Kidd who was to be our sensei for the afternoon. He thanked him for visiting us for the second time.
Having assumed everyone had already thoroughly warmed up, Shihan introduced a grappling floor exercise where we took it in turns to attempt to pin our partner to the floor. This was both fun and energetic.
The vast bulk of the afternoon’s content was based on the first two sequences of Heian Shodan. This was a well delivered and constructed course. The content was innovative, yet simple, giving benefit to all no matter what grade, rank of black belt or age. Most of all, apart from being informative, it was fun. It was apparent that all participants thoroughly enjoyed themselves.
The final activity involved half the group on the floor with hook and jab pads. On command, the rest had to kneel on that person and strike the pads and then pin the person down, then get away from so they could not strike back and quickly find another person on the floor, where the whole sequence began again. A great exercise, working with people of different ages, sizes and strengths gave us food for thought for real combat situations.
Many thanks must go to Shihan Kidd for a very enjoyably enlightening afternoon’s karate.
Next November Shihan returns to take us for a seminar looking at self defence in places other than a dojo. It will be a non-gi course, wearing street clothes and shoes, training on uneven floors, stairs with balconies, and obstacles such as chairs, tables and the like. I’m sure like the rest of us you can’t wait.
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