Running courses in the coldest season of the year is always a risk; you just don’t know what the weather is going to throw at you. The organisers always nervously eye the forecast. In fact, in all the years we have been running the Shikukai Winter Course in Essex, we have only had a couple of occasions where things became a little sticky. One for an unexpected fall of snow, and the other for a nasty seasonal storm which caused airport closures. But this year, we got lucky.
This was all good news because we were on target for topping our highest attendance for our annual seasonal Kangeiko (Winter training).
Location.
This is our second experiment with running the course in Bishop Stortford; which is looking like an ideal location, on many fronts. This includes, proximity of London Stansted Airport, the rail links and training located at two excellent venues across four days. All of this ticks so many boxes.
The train connection to London is very slick and at least one visitor from abroad took the opportunity to have a day in town (to catch the rather excellent ‘Samurai’ exhibition at the British Museum).
We had participants from Hungary, The Netherlands and France, as well as from the further north of the UK (Doncaster and Scarborough). With this being an open course, not all participants were members of Shikukai Karate-Do International. These courses are intended to inclusive and to engage with the wider Wado community, irrespective of politics.
The training.
All training was directed by our chief instructor, F. Sugasawa Sensei 7th Dan. The main drive of the training was put into the hands of the very able and experienced senior instructors, with Sugasawa Sensei picking up on the correct delivery of techniques and interjecting to ensure that everything stays on task.
According to Sugasawa Sensei, the three main course across the year (Spring, Autumn and Winter) are the opportunities to establish the core themes and principles and make sure everyone is fully onboard. For this particular course the overarching subjects for Sensei were to fully utilise our observational faculties; to be able to spot good practice (or even bad practice) and adjust our techniques appropriately; hence the junior grades were encouraged to watch the seniors very closely.
Sensei also wanted us all to constantly review where we had come from, ‘two steps forward, one step back’, to always revisit aspects of our earlier training, not assuming that everything is in place.
It is impossible to catalogue everything we did across the four days of training, as so many plates were all spinning at the same time. But, needless to say, there was a solid base of Kihon and solo kata, including Pinan kata, Kushanku, Naihanchi, Jion, Jitte.
There was time spent on paired kata, including for the advanced students, the bigger throwing techniques included in Kihon Gumite 5 and 10. This was made so much easier because the centre at Bishop Stortford was totally matted-out, so, in addition, we took the opportunity to recap on Ukemi waza, with the emphasis on safety.
In the extra hour on Saturday, students were given the opportunity to explore the kneeling defences of Wado karate, the Idori. This particular series included kansetsu waza and shime waza.
Extra-curricular.
There’s always time and space for getting together socially, with the visiting of various hostelries and eating establishments. Big thanks to Kelly Cavaciuti from Chippenham for securing an Italian restaurant on a busy Saturday evening (with it being Valentines Day as well) where many of the course participants met up and a good time was had by all.
On the subject of thanks…
Massive thank you for the Chelmsford team, captained by Steve Thain. This is for all of the many lifts, airport runs, venue to hotel runs; organising locations, timings, costings, catering (Alex and Jenny Clarke for the cakes) and so many other tasks which all go to make a successful friction-free course.
Senior instructors: Gratitude to Pam and Steve Rawson Sensei, Richard Barham Sensei, Rob Selby Sensei and Carol Chatterton Sensei, all freely and willing shared their combined decades of experience within the training.
Also, thank you to Sugasawa Sensei who continues to direct our progress, keeping a steady guiding hand on quality control and acting as a general inspiration to Shikukai members and supporting groups.
A last big thanks to the most important members of this shared enterprise; all of you who turned up to train. The equation is simple; ‘no participants’ equals ‘no courses’. Everyone is incredibly grateful for the success of this combined effort.
Dan Grading results:
Nidan success for:
- Astrid Schelen de Vries. Kenkokai Netherlands.
- Ramses Vilijn. Kenkokai Netherlands.
More photos on the Gallery page.
Tim Shaw
Shikukai Karate-Do International 