It was decided to hold this Course in two parts; firstly there was a lot of content to cover and secondly the two different venues made it easier for students’ journeys.
Part 1 in January was hosted by Kenbu Jyuku at The Osprey Leisure Centre, Portland while Part 2 was held in March at The Olympiad in Chippenham and hosted by Kiku Wa Jyuku.
Around 25 karateka attended on each of the sessions, including students from Kenbu Jyuku, Kiku Wa Jyuku, Mushin Jyuku, Showa Jyuku, Zendo Jyuku and Seido Jyuku.
It was explained to the students that Ura No Kumite are the forerunner and building blocks to modern syllabus pairworks and showing the importance of Seichisa 精 緻 さ (Precision) and Shogekido 衝 撃度 (Impact).
The two parts followed the same format, beginning with a short warm up and some basic techniques. Part 1 covered the odd numbers and Part 2 the even numbers, thereby dealing with all the 24 over the two sessions.
The main advantage of having a large group of students from various clubs meant that everyone could work with partners of differing age, ability and size, ensuring the necessary adaptions had to be factored in.
Ohtsuka III released his video showing the 24 Ura No Kumite several years ago, and it was interesting to show the students how the various techniques relate not only to the Shikukai syllabus but also pairworks from various other syllabuses that have been taught over the years. The longer a student had trained, the more relevant this became.
Several students commented on having a “lightbulb” moment when they made the correlation between a particular syllabus pairwork to it’s building block from the Ura No Kumite. It is hoped that the course was able to get students to think a little bit “out of the box” in how pairwork is constructed and practised.
Steve & Pam would like to thank everyone for attending and for the effort and enthusiasm they put in.
Pam Rawson
31/3/26
Shikukai Karate-Do International 