Overall, these past two weeks of training and getting to explore our new environments have been amazing! Although the training was mostly just tournament based training, I was able to pick up some great pointers here and there and can’t wait to continue putting them into practise. As well as doing lots of competition preparation I was able to join in on some fun games and exercises that I will definitely be bringing back to Australia to spread around.
One of the more simpler games that we were introduced to since being over here is “the stretching game”. This game is difficult to explain in words, but with a demonstration it is pretty self explanatory. Basically, the aim of the game is to make your partner have to stretch out into the splits until they can’t go any further with the penalty being burpees. This is a great way to have fun and get competitive while stretching.
Another fun game we played a few times was “dojo basketball”. This game was similar to netball, but contact. There were two teams and a ball between each player you have to pass the ball without running and score. The team who scores does either 10 pushup or 10 situps and the opposing team runs laps of the hall until the game is resumed. This game becomes very competitive and intense, but is great fun. Since we don’t train in a hall very often, this would be a great game to introduce to one of our QLD camps.
Aside from some of the games there have been many things that I have been learning throughout training. Since arriving here two of my main focuses have been my posture (keeping my hips under) and finding the contrast between fast, slow, hard and soft techniques mainly throughout my kata that I’ll be using for the tournament. Both of these have been challenging, but I have been seeing improvements over the past two weeks.
Overall, I think that being able to train here prior to the tournament has been great to life my spirit. I have found that over here the energy is always buzzing and it’s really uplifting. Everyone in the dojo is so respectful and supportive of one another which always puts me in a better state of mind for training.
