On the weekend of the 20th and 21st of July 2024, we held our annual gasshuku at Noosaville State School. Safe to say, it was a great weekend of training and much enjoyed by all attendees. Bryan Sensei and his team made sure that there was excellent quality training and knowledge passed on to the students and there was time for fun too!
On Saturday, we started with an early morning jog through the forest path. Sensei ensured that there was good spirit by starting up a karate chant at regular intervals. We would also stop every few minutes and do a random exercise as part of our warm up.
At the end of our run, we entered into an open field and arranged ourselves into our lines, where we did our official bow in to mark the start of training. We then proceeded to do many repetitions of simple, but important kihon.
Who can forget, the highlight of every one of our gasshukus, the 1’000 mae geris! Amazing how we can get through that and feel like it was the best part of the day! 500 kicks with the right and 500 kicks with the left leg. Easy-peasy!
After a great lunch, our afternoon training started with Bo training with Bryan Sensei showing us some great techniques for attack and defense. The Bo training session was perfectly constructed based on kihon, kumite and kata content. Our Bo kata was Jitte.
The next afternoon session consisted of self-defense training with Morney Sensei, covering various aspects and phases of an unwanted physical altercation. We looked at managing awareness, posture and deescalation. We looked at basic giaku-tsuki to stop an advancing opponent. We also looked at stopping take-downs and also performing them and finally, we reviewed some ground work.
That evening, it was time for some R & R, with a movie and some popcorn in the school hall.
Sunday it was beach training. This is always a lot of fun, with a beautiful sunrise and fresh, clean surf and the cool sand beneath our feet. Of course, a little bit of one-on-one techniques on the beach, followed by a dip in the water puts the cherry on top of the cake!
Karate Noosa has an excellent team, consisting of people that are both involved parents as well as dedicated karate-ka, always making sure that our events are well catered and organised, under the leadership of Bryan Sensei.
Thank you to all that helped and all those that attended! See you next time!
