Student Reports

Osu!

This year’s Summer Camp was organised by Wales Kyokushin and took place in Brecon, a small town on the edge of a large National Park. Tohyama Sensei was invited to teach there and Greg, Masami, Tudor and myself took part in the camp.

Greg, Masami and myself rallied the location thanks to Tudor and his great driving skills. After under four hours on the road, with the unavoidable rain when crossing the Welsh border, we made it to the venue, Christ College, and were greeted by the organisers who showed us around. The sun was set to shine for the whole weekend on this beautiful location.

The 1000 punches and 1000 kicks has usually been a good indicator to show how far the club has come. This year there was an evident jump in concentration and performance compared to last years’ event making it perhaps the most successful dojo event in recent times.

On entering the Dojo, there was a change in atmosphere with students from white belts to brown belts warming up so they were ready to train straight away. While in prior years there was a tendency to lose count and start again, everyone seemed to be very switched on and the 1000 punches were completed without any need to restart.

Kyokushin is about presence. Both physical and mental. It's most likely to be the only actual thing we can have a conscious decision about: to be present or not.

This Saturday we've been given the opportunity to present ourselves, examine ourselves, wonder, convince, enjoy and occasionally hate ourselves in the forms of Seiken-Chudan-Zuki and Chudan-Maegeri for kyokushinkai up to 6th kyu (yellow belts) and jodan for the more senior ones. We had the opportunity to do it 1000 times. Or more. Depending on how well we focused on the count. Or focused on our technique.