On 2 April some of the club’s black belts attended a karate instructors assessment session in Norwich together with members of other local Shukokai karate clubs. For Ian, James, Morgan and Steve this was the first time that they had attended such a session.
This was a chance for us to be assessed by the chief instructors in the Heian Ryu Karate Group as instructors ourselves rather than for our own karate skills. We still got to show those off though as we were the students being instructed when we were not at the front taking the lesson.
I think we all performed well, demonstrating our techniques with precision whilst also explaining what students should be thinking about when trying to get their techniques as close to perfect as they can. We also managed to stamp our own mark on proceedings, having turned up with a very large number of pads, it was clear that we meant to bring a degree of efficacy to proceedings.
We were made to feel welcome by the assessors and our fellow karate instructors and students.
We all took short turns to take the class which was structured very much like a normal trying session with some vigorous warm ups followed by basics, a large chunk of pad work (that was us), a bit of kata and bunkai and even some partner work (that was me).
At the end of the session there was time for some useful feedback from the assessors.
We all passed so the club now has another four approved karate instructors who are more than capable of taking training sessions and helping us all to improve our karate skills.
Ian and James took a two hour session the other day with me training just like any other student. I enjoyed myself – thank you very much.
Stacy
