2018 has brought some great and very special memories………………
Our little club continues to grow with newcomers arriving regularly and current members strengthening their techniques and making some great progress, especially the young ones, “adults, you could do better” 🙂
We have had numerous kyu gradings where our students gave their all to earn their next Shotokan Karate belt. Adam Gaskell deserves a special mention for grading shodan kuro obi (1st dan black belt). Adam started his karate endeavours with sensei Kevin King (5th dan) and joined our club when he moved locally to the dojo. Sensei Kevin and I were both impressed and proud of the effort and ability you demonstrated in your grading. A true inspiration to your fellow karateka.
Our MIND fundraising day in November raised £1,073.00 in our “Karate Combination Countup” event. An amazing effort by the most amazing people.
We performed literally thousands of push ups, a whole array of blocks, kicks and punches. We learned new and interesting self defence techniques for application, as a very last resort, in real life situations. There has been bucket fulls of sweat, tired muscles, loud kiais and impressive efforts from all of our students but most importantly for me was to see the improvement in fitness and the exponential growth in confidence and ability from our beginners and kids. The advanced adults have progressed amazingly well too and your kuro obi’s (black belts) await in the not too distant future. It has been an honour to teach you all and I look forward to furthering your karate studies during 2019 and beyond.
There is so much more to look forward to in 2019. We may well see our first beginner to black belt gradings under the watchful eye of our chief instructor sensei Tony Conroy (8th dan). I am off to Japan in April to study with Fujita sensei (JKA 8th dan) for a couple of weeks and to hopefully bring back some exciting new techniques to share with you all.
We wish you and your families a very merry Christmas and look forward to training beginning again in January.
Thank you all for your continued support
Go shien itadaki arigatōgozaimasu
ご支援いただきありがとうございます
