Sensei Mike Gude visits Selby Club

This Sunday unfortunately Sensei Ash and Trevor had family commitments and were not able to instruct, Sensei Mike Gude from Haxby Club kindly offered to come and put us through our paces.

Helen, Thomas, Rebecca and myself travel to train with Sensei Mike most Thursdays and we all appreciated Sensei travelling to offer us the benefit of his experience on Sunday.

When an instructor visits another club he will give the best instruction he can and will expect the best effort form the students he is teaching. This will "raise the game" for all, instructor and students alike.

We have a lot of beginners who have only been training for a couple of weeks and this raise in pace may have taken them a little out of their comfort zone. However this should be considered as good preparation for courses and gradings with our chief instructor Kato Shihan.

At the beginning of the class I explained the meaning and words of our formal rei and then welcomed Sensei Mike with rei and introduction.

Sensei Mike's instruction included the importance of good stance, for both attack and defence. In Kihon he concentrated on good form in our punches in both stance and stepping and moving on into combinations.

Towards the end of the first session he broke down Heian Shodan into "bite size"chunks so all could follow, concentrating on stance and the transfer of weight when changing position and moving.

Our middle session is aimed more towards 6th and 5th Kyu's, Sensei moved onto combinations and and the importance of hand and foot finishing together. The theme progressed through Kata. Our mid grades had a good 30 minutes of intensive training.

Our final session is aimed at 4thKyu to Black belt, we started with Kata, Heian Yondan, Godan, Tekki Shodan, Basai Dai and Jion. We went onto semi-free kumite aimed at our 1st Kyu's, Sensei is looking at developing spirit, a confidence that can come from a relaxed but powerful technique. Sensei is a big believe in attack in defence, why move back in defence when you can move forward or to the side. Semi free is a big step from 1 step, but Helen and Thomas are progressing well. With a Shodan grading in their sights for 2007?

Thank you Sensei for you instruction and thank you to all our students, although we have quite a few beginners at the moment your etiquette and effort during training was commendable.

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