Great Yarmouth officially sucks. You wake up to some sunshine and upon exiting the caravan, you run back inside to get a jacket because it's SO BLOODY WINDY! I am so glad to be back in sunny Stafford. Never thought I'd say that. Feel dirty now.
Anyway, the Seminar, better write about that. It was a fantastic piece of martial arts instruction. To start it all off, our head Sensei, Rich, was asked to choose a student to take the warm up. After eyeing us all up, he chose Fletch. It was rather fortunate it wasn't me, I've been warned before for my kind of warm up =] you've never heard so many people whinge lol.
To help with the stretching, Master Hiron John decided to take over. I think in a previous life he was chief nut crusher in the Spanish Inquisition. I was stretching muscles I didn't know I had. And they didn't like it. They were sending pretty specific messages to my brain along the lines of "STOP! NOW!"
After what felt like a session on a self inflicted rack, we finally started learning some techniques. First, basic wrist techniques. This is where we begin to realise our club takes things rather seriously. Watching every one else, we weren't happy unless we were being struck hard or screaming. Overall, Master John imparted some very useful techniques, which I am positive shall be used again frequently.
Next up was Soke Cliff Witcher, a Jujitsu instructor. Finally, some techniques we could completely relate to. Soke Witcher utilised a very hard style of Jujitsu. I don't mean in the sense of difficult, just more striking related. We all thoroughly enjoyed the time he spent teaching and we will hopefully see more of him again soon.
After the break, we did some Wing Chun and Kempo Karate, which was a fun change, but not particularly up my alley. I am a grappler, pure and simple. Following the warm down, we chatted a bit with our instructors and left to carry on with our holiday. So thank you to everyone who attended, it was an enlightening experience. My only piece of criticism, we could have done with some more mats for a bit of grappling. Oh well, maybe next time.
What really made the weekend for me was spending time with the other 8 instructors from our club. It's a very rare opportunity we're in one place, so hearing all their various backgrounds and ideas on martial arts reignited my love for Jujitsu, which had started to wane in recent times. I think I was just becoming burnt out and tired, but that has now all changed and I can't wait to teach and train again.
PS. I haven't forgotten about .8 Part 3 and 4. Just been a little busy, but I will get to writing it up.
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