New Year - New Blogs

January 2010 has brought us two new blogs, in addition to the new IJKA website.....

John McCarthy has started the Fermoy Shotokan Karate Club blog, the Hombu dojo of IJKA Ireland, run by Ireland's Chief Instructor - Toomey Sensei - 6th Dan.
John's blog is still under construction but well worth a look.

Marie and Malcolm Murphy, Kohai of Sensei Stacey at Tuam have started the Faolchu Martial Arts Club. Marie has been a long time follower of martial arts and has used her child care training with her martial arts knowledge to develop specialised sessions for children from 4 to 8 years.

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Fermoy SKC Blog

Faolchu MAC Blog

The all new IJKA Website relaunched

The IJKA Website has been totally overhauled and relaunched.
Many thanks to Sensei Steve Cameron and his "Webmaster" for all their efforts.

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IJKA Website

What Block Jim?

As you raise through the grades you should put some effort in to improving your knowledge of karate terminology. This will improve your understanding and in most cases make your training and grading easier as you will understand what you about to do before it is demonstrated.

Jim (visiting from the Haxby dojo) had described a block tonight as "Ude-Barai", but how does this translate to English?
While we are all familiar with "Gedan Bari", Gedan meaning lower level and Barai as sweep or parry.
To confuse things a little "Ude" is often interchanged with "Wan" and both mean arm.

So "Ude Barai" is arm sweep, it would be very difficult to sweep with the top of the arm and that it why it is usually referring to a forearm sweeping block or parry.
The forearm is "Zenwan" or sometimes "Shubo" which literally translates as "arm stick".

Different parts of the forearm also have their own terms:
"Haiwan" is the back of the forearms in left arm in H2 move 1.
"Naiwan" is the inside of the forearm (Thumb side)
"Gaiwan" is the outside of the forearm (Little finger side)
"Shuwan" is the underside of the forearm
remember all of the above are parts of the body not names of blocks in them self.

So Jim What you understand as "Ude Barai" could be explained as "Naiwan Barai" - Inside of forearm sweeping block / parry. Not every instructor will describe the same block in the same way, because as you can see you could describe the block detailing the inner forearm, the forearm or the whole arm, none of them would be wrong just not so specific. You could also add terms to the description to explain if the block comes from the outside or the inside, if it is at one level, rising or blocking down, seamlessly never ending......

My best advise is to try and pick up a few terms every month, you should be able to describe all the moves of all the kata you already know. If you think about it you may get stuck even at the beginning of H2?

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Welcome to Shotokan Karate at Hambleton

Just a quick post to say a big welcome to Charlie, Michael, Liam, Jamie, Sabrina, Harry and Megan who all tried Shotokan Karate for the first time tonight.
If you didn't get a chance to make week 1 please just turn up next week and look forward to joining in.
I'll ask Sensei Rebecca not to get so carried away on the warm ups next week.

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Introduction to Karate at Hambleton starts 20/01/10

SSKC are running a 10 week introduction to Karate at Hambleton CofE Primary School.

The ten 45 minute sessions are designed for anyone over 7 years old, families are very welcome. The fee for the course is only £20, our aim is that you/your child will be able to make an informed decision if Shotokan Karate is an activity you want to follow with a minimum of financial outlay.

The sessions will run from 6.30 to 7.15pm and commence on 20th January and conclude at the end of March. Just turn up in loose sports clothing and have a go.

We are a "not for profit" club run by its members and our standard monthly training fees work out at less than £2/hour so Shotokan Karate could be that inexpensive activity that you have been looking for.

If you have any queries please Email me from the link in the sidebar.

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Kato Shihan Open Course - Selby - February 2010

Open Kata Course and Grading with Kato Shihan 9th Dan
IJKA World Chief Instructor - 20th/21st February 2010

The Course:

Saturday 20th February :
13.30 for 14.00 to 16.00 and to 17.00hrs for Higher grades

Sunday 21st February :
09.30 for 10.00 to approx 12.00 followed by gradings to approx 13.00 hrs

Training Fee - £18.00 (One or both days, same price)

Grading Fee - £9th Kyu to 1st Kyu = £10, Pee Wees 12th Kyu to 10th Kyu = £6.00

Remember all IJKA members that are grading MUST attend the kata course and your total fee will be either £28 or £24 depending on grade.

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The Venue:

Barlby High School, York Road, Barlby, Nr Selby, North Yorkshire, England, YO85JP

(On the main road through the village, just off the A19)

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The Meal:

At Caesars @ The Abbey,Pizzeria & Ristorante, 12a Park Street, Selby YO8 4PW

There is an open invitation to join us for a meal on Saturday night at 19.45 for 20.00 hrs, but you must E mail Paul ASAP (latest 13th Feb) so numbers can be finalised. (Link in sidebar)

Click on the yellow button below to view the "Caesars at the Abbey" website

Caesars

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The Accommodation:

There is limited Accommodation within 5 miles of the dojo, but if required you can try the following:

The Wishing Well, New Country Inns , Selby YO8 8LZ

Click on the yellow button below to book accommodation at "The Wishing Well"

The Wishing Well

The Parsonage Country House Hotel, York Road, Escrick, York YO19 6LF

situated 5 miles North of Barlby on the A19

Click on the yellow button below to book accommodation at "The Parsonage"

The Parsonage

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Local Airports:

Leeds Bradford & Doncaster Airport

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Bradford 10k Fundraiser

Location: Bradford, United Kingdom(starting and finishing in Centenary Square)
Date: Sunday 21 March 2010
Time: 9.00am
Distance: 10K

I have just clicked on the link below and entered the Bradford 10k, I will be raising money for the SSKC fund to help subsidise our club competition squad and coaching / instructor courses.

I won't be running, just walking...well "tabbing" a forced march carrying an additional 20Kg for good luck. I will be with quite a few members of 106 Field Squadron RE (V) who will be raising money for a wide range of good causes.

If anyone would like to join me and raise some funding for the club please click on the link below. If you are sensible you will just run round. You can then buy me a beer at the finish line when I eventually get there.

Shake out a few Christmas cob-webs and click on the yellow button below to go to the "Bradford 10k" site, sign up, pay your money, do a bit of training for it, get a lot of sponsorship and enjoy yourself on Sunday morning 21st March. You have to be over 15 so parents are ok to run on behalf of their children.

Bradford 10 K

I also plan to compete in the Army Martial Arts Competition at the (ASPT) Army School of Physical Training in Aldershot on the Saturday so I may be a little stiff.

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Thank you Sensei

Many thanks to Sensei Mike Gude - 5th Dan - Senior Instructor Haxby Shotokan Karate Club for travelling to Selby to take our younger members, while we held our club meeting.

Our senior members also enjoyed a session of Sensei Mike's kumite training for the last thirty minutes of training. Osu!

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SSKC "New Years" Meeting

Many thanks to all the members / parents that managed to attend what I hope will become an annual event in January. I was able to provide some detail to our planned diary that has been sent to all members and appears on the "Diary" page of this blog.

The clubs aim with its diary of events is to provide additional training and competition opportunities for those members that want to add to the normal weekly club training and IJKA Yorkshire Kato Shihan courses during the year. I would like these opportunities be available to all our karateka that would like to attend, without financial restraint on individuals or parents. A big aim I know.

We are a not for profit club and we try to set our fees so that we just cover our hall hire and insurances etc. My challenge to our karateka was, if they thought that this was a good idea we had better do a bit of self help.

Fundraising for these additional activities will be very much raised by our members, for our members. Our arrangements for fundraising will be formalised at our club AGM in May, but our members present were keen to make a start as soon as possible.

Julie has kindly agreed to take an initial lead as our "Fundraising Officer" the post will officially become available for election at the AGM. Funding will be raised for two causes:

1. The development of our senior Kyu grades and Dan grades by attending seminars, coaching and instructor courses etc, for the good and benefit of the club. The idea is to develop our members to become our instructors / club officials of the future. This is a long term cause of continued investment in our members.


2. The development of a "squad fund" to provide support for SSKC members of any grade to take part in local, regional, National and International competition.

Julie will in the coming weeks put together a fundraising committee to help her plan the clubs proposed events. They already have a few ideas to work on. Again, to be formalised at the AGM, but I would propose that any monies raised would be held in the clubs bank account, accounted for separately by the clubs treasurer and expended by a committee of 3 club members: Chairman, Secretary and Fundraising Member.

Look forward to hearing more about SSKC fundraising from Julie and her team in the near future.

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Blog New Year Update

First Post - 29th August 2005
People have visited from 145 different countries in the last 2 years, the rankings are as follows - UK, USA, Ireland, Canada, Germany, France, Japan and Italy...
In 2009 we started with about 900 views per month and this rose to 1400 towards the end of 2009.

To ensure the blog loads fairly fast it is actually 17 blogs all linked together.
There is the main blog, the home page where there is currently 386 posts and the yellow buttons take you to separate blogs that have a very similar appearance like a fresh page on a website.

I saved my templates today to my hard drive, I last did this in April 2007 when it copied to 16 pages of HTML text, in the new format it was 235 pages of text. I thought I should also save the information posts from the various sections, but no time today (or in the near future).

Not sure where the blog is headed in 2010???
I estimate that I have spent approx 1000 hours developing the blog, if it ever crashed I don't think I would have the heart to start again. I have had many +ve comments from around the world about the karate tutorial and kata links to video footage. I will try and keep these sections up to date, but I think 2010 may bring a stronger focus on our club and its members. A little less blogging and a lot more karate, Osu!

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More Asai Ryu Kata Videos added

I have uploaded a few more Asai Ryu kata videos.

• Junro Shodan - Team Kata - JKS
• Kashu - Training - JKS
• Hachimon - IJKA Latvia
• Rantai - Step by Step guide from IJKA Latvia

If you follow the link to my kata page and double click on the kata name, it will take you to the individual kata page.

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Shotokan & IJKA Kata