Hot, Heavy and Humble Hans Rana Course

A course with a lie in, unheard of, but well worth it. August 11^th by invitation from Mike Sensei we hosted one of the most phenomenal instructors we could, Hans Rana Sensei.  Starting at 13.00 with greetings with karate ka attending the course from Haxby, Selby Shotokan Karate Club, JKS Bradford and a few members from Hans Sensei’s club JKS Loughborough.

All who Attended 

Promptly at 13.30 we began training with Hans taking us through some warm ups focused on stretching us out but also some strength conditioning. From stretches, to squats, to everyone’s favourite push ups we did it all, continuing the warm up theme we then moved on to some hip rotation exercises with a combination making up a forward’s arm swing followed by a nagashi uke, countered with Empi-uchi, repeated on both sides.  

After our intense warm ups, it was straight in to it, starting with basics changing stance, we started with front Stace partner work mirroring each other, then after 10 or so attempts we added on a gyaku tsuki finishing the combination with change stance mai geri gyaku tsuki.  The next combination we look at back stance with a similar feel changing stance to get a feel of the correct stance, then we added Nukite in Zenkutsu-dachi. Our final combination put our kicks in to practise all on one leg we demonstrated mai geri, yoko geri keage and mawashi geri.

After a brief water break it was back to training, we started with some kata to change up the feel, we began with Jono-kata (beginners kata) which looks at basic stances attacks and blocks, then we practised gyaku tsuki no kata (all attacks in gyaku (reverse)) running though each several times to get a good practise at them finally Hans sensei allowed all the dan grades to show us what they had and they ran through each kata to their own timing. The next part of the class took us through some short but intense kumite sections of 15 seconds where we just had to push against our partner with several combinations without stopping, along with some speed building exercises in the essence of preforming 10 star jumps as fast as possible before your partner and punching the gyaku tsuki.

Posing in our favourite kata stances

The final part of the session saw Hans Sensei for the benefit of the dan grades running through joko issei the first kata of Asai Sensei’s joko katas to help them with progression in their grades and to teach them an unfamiliar and unusual kata. After running though joko issei several times and almost everyone (even Hans Sensei) getting a little confused with some of the finer points of the kata we moved in to the cool downs which after such an intense training session were a god send.

After thanks to Hans Sensei and thanks to all who attended the course we departed in traditional Haxby karate fashion after a very hot heavy session we retired to the local hostelry for a few cold refreshing (slightly alcoholic) beverages with friends to show karate in its other light as a social hobby rather than just all training all the time.

Leading into the evening it was time for the club to show our thanks to Hans sensei for his one of a kind instruction and we headed in to your for a good night out, starting in the punch bowl Jim, Holly, Dave and myself (Ben) were the first to arrive quickly joined by Mike and Ian T and we sat outside waiting the eventual arrival of Paul Brant sensei with our guests Hans, Janak Rana and his son Deepak. Moving on from the punch bowl we stopped in the cross keys for another beverage and finally we ended in the Viceroy for a fantastic meal. 

Our spread

As the night drew to an end we dwindled in numbers till for a final drink back in the key there were only Jim, holly, Dave, Mike and myself before we then all retired home after a long and frankly amazing day from the start of Hans sensei’s training to the last sip of our last drinks.

Hans, Mike and Paul Senseis enjoying a G&T

All been said and done I would like to the everyone who attended the course and showed up for the training especially those who had to travel quite some distance to be there from Selby, Bradford and even a few who drove all the way from hull to attend but most of all I would like to thank Hans Rana for coming all the way from Loughborough to humble us with his instruction and to Janak and Deepak for joining him as well.

OSS

Ben 

visit www.haxbykarate.co.uk to find out more about our Club. For more information email info@haxbykarate.co.uk