Copyright Peter Morton Academy of Judo Jujitsu Karate
Kaleen junior seminar 2006
4 March 2006
The ACT 2006 junior seminar was hosted by the Kaleen branch and held at St Michael's Primary School, Kaleen, ACT.
This year's seminar kicked off at 9am with an introduction of dan belts and a quick run down of the agenda, followed by the allocation of the thirty-six attending students into teams.
Warm-up exercises were a prelude to a session on Tsuki with Shihan David Rowley. To demonstrate his point on how to develop an effective punch he used an analogy of a flat piece of metal and a round metal ball accompanied with the question of "Which does more damage?"
Shihan went on to make a point. If your fist and application of a punch are loose and not right then, like a flat piece of metal, the strike is not as effective as when your fist is tight and your application is right and on target, like a metal ball. Shihan Edward Scharrer ran the students through basic kicks with special attention to body position and the way it relates to balance. The focus was on correct stance and weight distribution. Like in the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears, body weight should not be too far forward nor too far back but just right.
After the morning tea break, Shihan Scharrer had the students demonstrate the Basic Steps Kata, then he corrected inaccuracies, the main point being focus and the Basic Steps Kata.
When doing the Basic Steps Kata students were looking in a different direction to where they should, so Shihan Scharrer used a tennis ball as an example of focus.
Shihan looked in one direction and threw the ball in another direction. This demonstrated how most times you would miss the target that you wanted to hit. He then looked in the direction he wanted the ball to go, threw the ball and hit his target. So when doing the Basic Steps Kata you look at the target, focus and aim, just the same as when you throw or catch a ball. After some more kata practice the students formed into groups of three and a Basic Steps Kata competition took place, with the winner being the one that took the shortest time with the least amount of errors. A time penalty was added for each error made. Nobody beat Shihan Scharrer's time of 25.92 seconds with only two mistakes.
Renshi Scott Teys took the students through a warm-up and then went into why we do breakfalls, explaining that a breakfall's main purpose is to minimise damage when we fall.
After some explaining and practice of breakfalls, Renshi Teys asked "Who learnt something from that?" There was not much reply, so he asked "Did anyone learn anything from that?" "Yes! Yes! Yes!" Echoed around the dojo.
Lunch came and went down then it was time for some more learnin'.
Renshi Peggy O'Malley held a session on how to punch and block correctly while training in self-defence. She stressed that a student must execute blocks and punches properly when doing technique training and in the two-man attack. If you do not train in the punching and blocking techniques properly every time, then in a real situation these basic elements will not be as effective as they should and could be. She then put the students through some rigorous training in these techniques.
After everybody had blocked until their arms hurt, Renshi O'Malley put on a two-man attack demonstration against two male attackers, proving once again that a female can put up a good defence against a male attacker.
Next came the Self-defence competition with Jordan Nguyan of the Kaleen ACT, branch emerging as the winner.
The Basic Steps Kata competition followed closely on the heels of the Self-defence competition, with this year's winning honours going to the Queanbeyan NSW branch. Equal second place went to Batemans Bay NSW, Hughes ACT and Radcliffe NSW. The judges could not separate these three.
To add some fun and to put the brain into relax-mode, a game of tunnel ball commenced. For some reason this soon erupted into chaos and confusion as to who was winning what! Could this have been aided by the Sensei that stole the ball from an opposing team and then proceeded to take off and evade the pursuers of the ball? (By any chance that would not have been Sensei Alan M, the same Sensei that usually causes chaos every year at these seminars? - Editor)
Finally sanity ruled and John Bear, with the aid of three of his students, demonstrated his art of Kokusai Jujutsu with a good show of oooh! and aaah! throws. Questions about and requests for more of these types of throws followed. A presentation of a Certificate of Appreciation of attendance was given to John Bear at the completion of his demonstration.
Afternoon tea was downed then it was into balance in throws with Shihan Scharrer and Renshi Teys. Again weight distribution, balance and correct position were demonstrated and stressed, then it was on to practice these by inflicting Ogoshi on each other.
Finally everybody lost interest and the seminar drew to a close at 4.10pm with the usual formalities.