The course was an opportunity to polish up on old skills and to learn some new ones. It was held in the usual place, the YMCA in Lytham St Annes and was run by Sensei Carpenter with assistance from some other instructors from the regional clubs: Ray Wilkin, David Lewin, Geoff Mitchell and Tony Atherden.

Saturday morning started off with a stretch and exercise session taken by Sensei Wilkin. This was followed by a lesson of basics techniques broken down by Sensei Carpenter into stages to confirm angles, hip movement and to show some of the new members to the association some of  Sensei Kanazawa’s syllabus.

It was nice to meet and train with some of the new SKKIF members, who had joined us from their dojo in Milton Keynes. We would like to welcome them to the association.

After a short lunch break we were back in the dojo where Sensei Lewin taught us one of Sensei Kanazawa’s breathing Katas. This incorporated most of the basic stances and also made students think about the correct breathing techniques that they should use.
 

 
The afternoon session was instructed by Sensei Carpenter, showing jiyu ippon kumite, again focusing on correct angles and practicing two of each attack from the syllabus. 

Following this, Sensei taught Meikyo with particular emphasis on the application of the “cliff jump”, making sure that the attack to the head was on target when jumping and that the defender was directly behind the attacker on landing and not to the side.

Sunday morning began with Sensei Mitchell giving the warm up and stretching session This was then followed by Sensei Carpenter going through gohon kumite, sambon kumite, kihon ippon kumite and jiyu ippon kumite. As before we went through two of each attack from the syllabus. 

Once the people who were learning the techniques for the first time had grasped the idea we all practiced the moves for about ten minutes each taking it in turn to attack and defend.
 
After lunch Sensei Lewin started the afternoon session with the breathing Kata that we had learnt Saturday. Then this was followed by Sensei Atherden’s warm up.

We were then divided into groups of four Each group formed a “W” shape across the dojo. The first person stood at the head of the line and then attacked the first person in the “W” with kizami zuki, then gyaku zuki to the second kizami zuki to the third person and gyaku zuki to the fourth. After a few turns we each went down the line ten times speed and power
The next exercise was done in groups of five. One student stood in the middle and the other four stood around forming a square. The first attacker stepped forward kicking mae geri, this was blocked by the student in the middle who defended with gedan barai and countered with kizami zuki gyaku zuki. The next attacker then stepped forward again kicking mae geri and this was again blocked by stepping back into niko ashi dachi on gedanbarai and countered in the same way. Special emphasis was put on the defender not turning until the attach was made. The defender would then step away to block and step back in to counter.
The kyu grades were then split fro the class and Sensei Wilkin taught them Kanku-dai, while Sensei Lewin taught Enpi to the dan grades. He emphasised correct stepping and angles on the first moves. Once we had gone through the kata a couple of times Sensei Atherden took the class for Jion, and again we concentrated the finer details of the kata.

Sensei Carpenter then continued kata training with Chinte, Wankan and finished with Kanku-dai.

The whole weekend was very enjoyable and had great support from both the Windsor and Romford dojos, but as usual the time went all to fast and we all left the YMCA looking forward to Sensei Kanazawa’s open course in November. 

 

 
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