Currently we are slap bang in the middle of Funakoshi Karate International South Africa’s official 2010 Gashuku, though truth be told it is not quite in its usual format.
We are extremely grateful to Sensei Marius Bouwer, Sensei Kai and the rest of the Funakoshi Karate International Germany karateka that made the long trip down from Germany, not to mention the added bonus of the arrival of Sensei Geert from Funakoshi Karate International Belgium and Sensei Dusty who hails from Durban.
For this particular update though I want to deliver a quick update on what has so far been an absolutely exhilarating training experience under Sensei Marius and Kai for the senior evening training sessions, held on a Tuesday and Thursday evening at the Charles Morkel club in Strand.
For the first training session (despite having just come off a 23 hour journey without any rest), Sensei Marius and Kai took a large contingent of senior belts (of which I was lucky to be a part of despite my lower belt status) through an invaluable hour and a half session which taught us the importance of the correct tension, when to properly release it and also on how to control one’s level of relaxation in movement until that split second when your body needs to explode out its potential power.
Shimsome, Funakoshi’s first kata was the learning tool used for the evening and even this very first, most basic of the katas proved that it still had a lot to teach a person, and under the watchful eye of the Germans we trained, we learned and we improved.
The second training session was a two hour class in which the second kata, Kagame took centre stage, as Sensei Marius and Kai quickly took us through it just to remind us how it looks and then knuckled down to business as we spent the next hour and a half or so, step by step taking in and practising the bunkai (application) of the kata, an invaluable lesson in teaching us why the movements of the kata are arranged as they are and what they actually mean.
This intense training is sure to have generated a lot of bruises and welts in the process, but it was a deeply satisfying lesson in teaching us Kagami and the way it ought to be delivered, and more importantly, reminding us of how powerful our karate should be.
All in all, the first two senior training sessions under Sensei Marius and Kai have been an absolute pleasure and a fantastic learning opportunity to take part in, and without a doubt, this particular Gashuku 2010 is only going to leave Funakoshi Karate International South Africa as a much stronger style than what it currently is!
Osu.