A course with a lie in, unheard of, but well worth it. August
11th 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