Hi All
This last term has been an action packed one – very
exciting.
It all started with Kevin’s visit. It has been six
years since Kevin, Helena and I trained together. I was really impressed by
how much his Karate has developed; he seems to have a unique understanding
of how the individual disciplines within karate all fit together.
Helena and I spent three weeks training with him in
January and during that time, we felt like complete novices. But at the same
time, it was really inspiring to realise that our own development had been
given a new direction to explore.
He enjoyed teaching the two extra sessions of our club
and I think that he truly succeeded in giving everybody a glimpse of
something completely different and very very effective.
Kevin and his family enjoyed New Zealand immensely and
I believe that he is quietly looking into ways of immigrating. Fingers
crossed that they succeed!
The next big event was Micke Schneider’s visit from
Sweden. He worked really hard training 2 – 3 sessions a day in our
garage/dojo for three weeks in order to do the final preparations for his
grading.
And what a grading it was too. He produced an excellent
standard on the day and we had no hesitation in awarding him his 2nd
Dan; we look forward to many more visits from him.
The Web page had been a remarkable success with nearly
500 visitors (not hits) since January and we have had a lot of positive feed
back from people from all over the world.
Not everybody has agreed with what we have written on
our Opinions page; but very few have taken offence. The ensuing debates have
often been very stimulating and good-natured with all differences in style,
philosophy and direction being mutually respected.
If you haven’t already seen it, check it out at
www.bugeikan.com. I try to update it regularly and I would like you all to feel
free to e-mail us at
guss@bugeikan.com
or helena@bugeikan.com if you have
any suggestions or wishes as to what should be on that site – it is your
site after all!
This last term has really been very focused on seeing
that everybody goes up a grade. You have all put a lot of effort into your
training and most of you succeeded. We will be making an extra effort next
term to help those that missed out on a chance to grade.
The majority of next terms training will be focused on
a mixture of consolidating the skills that we have and learning some new
skills for the next grade.
Helena and I had a very interesting time training with
Dennis May (8th Dan) recently. Dennis is the national coach and
he was explaining the new WKF competition rules for performing kata and that
the WKF now had a standard for performing all katas. No variation is to be
tolerated.
This non-tolerance of variation is something that goes
against everything that we believe in, a sentiment shared by Dennis May: he
advised that competition kata should be learned and treated as quite
separate katas and that we should all continue doing “our thing”.
One interesting development though is that finalists in
kata competition will be expected to give a demonstration of some of the
bunkai within the kata. We have for a long time been suggesting bunkai
competitions and we certainly see this as a very large step in the right
direction.
The
Junior Club
Congratulations
go to those that passed their grades:
Junior
red belt:
Junior
yellow belt:
Junior
orange belt:
Junior
Blue belt:
Junior
purple belt:
The
results of last term’s kata competition were as follows:
The
blue team won the end of term sparring competition that turned out to be
very competitive and exciting – well done!
The Senior Club
Congratulations
go to the following people who graded last term:
Red
belt (9th Kyu):
Orange
belt (7th Kyu):
Blue belt (5th
Kyu):
Purple
belt (4th Kyu):
Brown belt (3th
Kyu):
Brown belt (2nd Kyu):
Black
belt (2nd Dan):
Well done all of you
– see you next term!
Guss
& Helena