Sensei Shane Dorfman invited me to be his & Sensei Malcolm Dorfman’s guest at the second annual Karatenomichi Black Belt Club Training, which was held in Brakpan 18 July.
Sherilee & I arrived there first (what else is new?) & as the people started arriving an exchange of OSS was given between karateka, who were all excited for this training. People from all over Gauteng were there, if I am not mistaken about 50.
Sherilee is still doing rehab for her knees, so Kihon & Kata training is a no-go until after August. Some people do not understand why, but I have no reason to explain to people why. Sensei Malcolm gave us permission to take photos of the training, so she had something to do… click click click… over & over.
After roll-call was taken & formalities to start the class, we had a fast warm up & the games were on. Sensei Malcolm’s theme was starting the punch at the same time as the leg on oi-zuki. A typical piece of karate that in the past only the Japanese were able to work with.
What was interesting was the link between this idea & the shinshiku-dachi of Yahara Sensei, which we worked out to be the first quarter of the move from a basic kamae… okay let me explain for those who are not following:
“Gedan-barai-kamae!” mmmm nice long basic kamae! From there working with the idea of hands & feet moving together split from kamae to full oi-zuki into stage 1, then stage 2, then stage 3 a & then stage 3 b.
Stage 1 being starting the hand & the foot together, obviously the front hand will start moving in towards the hip aswell. The rolling over the front knee, keeping the same height & ensuring that one’s posture is perfect gets us to Yahara Sensei’s shinshiku-dachi… mmmm the link has been established.
Stage 2, with dynamic hip movement; bring the rear leg next to the base leg also having the hands move to where they are both in the same position (that being half way forward or back).
Stage 3 a, move again into shinshiku-dachi, ensuring all of the ethics of Shotokan is being kept to the maximum. All the time the thrust of the base leg must be of maximum output.
Stage 3 b, is the final thrust of the base leg & finishing off of the hands.
BAM!
We can do it in stages, why not in one blasting movement?
From there we went on to Jiyu Ippon Kumite. Keeping to its values, that being a block & a counter must be present. The following four situations were trained:
Attacker only worked chudan-oi-zuki. Block & shift backwards loading / compressing the rear leg & from there blasting a gyaku-zuki through the attacker. Then we did black & gyaku-zuki counter as if we did not really move away. The third was block & gyaku-zuki counter simultaneously, which gave a few guys some bumps & bruises. & the fourth… as the guys moves oi-zuki with a deflection block. To tell you the truth, I was bashed. I am still feeling it today.
From there Sensei Marco Fanicchi worked on ushiro-geri. The dynamic of the turn was the thing I struggled with. After Sensei Shane helped out a bit, it was looking a bit better. From there we worked on the relaxed action of the kick… for so many years I have been forcing this kick… Sensei Shane demoed a kick on me & instantaneously me arm went numb. After a minute I got pins & needles & then the pain set in.
After this Sensei Shane worked on our brains… He opened up with a question: what makes a complete karateka? Well I will not give you all the answers… go spend time in your dojo & work it out.
Well actually I thought in the beginning it was easy as we did Heian Shodan in reverse… & every one who trains with me should know I do about 10 variations on Heian Shodan.
From there we trained Join in mirror image… ha ha ha, man was it funny. I got it in the last try.
The Sensei Shane made us do Empi’s jump in mirror image… not funny at all. Sensei Malcolm then asked us to do the Heian Godan jump in mirror & that too had us confused for a minute.
This brings us down to one point, training one side of the kata, educates our brain to do only half the work… we should train both sides of our body & also our brain. There are many Shotokan kata which do not have mirrored moves & therefore we should spend time to do variations on our kata.
We worked a bit of free kumite on our “not favourite side” aswell. I train both sides as a rule, but I do have certain techniques which I do not do from either left leg back or right leg back kamae. To tell you the truth, I really can not remember where this fitted in, but I think it was after Sensei Shane’s kata variations.
Sherilee on request of Sensei Marco took new photos for the BBC part of the website.
After the ending formalities we all went off to Wimpy for a breakfast… the food was okay, but the company was great… Bryan stealing Sherilee as usual… some times people think they are together.
I would like to thank Sensei’s Malcolm, Marco & Shane for the awesome training & obviously the invite to have me there too.
Oss!
