On the last few trainings everyone was busy preparing for the upcoming Embu in Farmleigh House in Phoenix park.
The training was structured on a way that we did warmup all together, rolling and punching drills, and then kyu graded students continued with studying Kihon happo while black belts prepared for the demonstration.

On Monday we started with all the different rolls:
1. Zenpo kaiten
2. Yoko kaiten
3. Hoko kaiten
4. combinations with walking in hanza no kamae and rolling.

After warmup, in preparation for the Embu black belts were fixing the armours and getting instructions on formal bowing and etiquette, while kyu graded students continued with study of Kihon happo:
1. Ura gyaku
2. Musha dori
3. Ganseki nage

On Thursday as the final preparation was underway, we had a great turnout of 29 people and we split the class from the start.

As there were many people, kyu grade training was about exploring the punches and blocks in close quarters and how to take balance away from the attacker when standing so close to him/her.
After that they looked at couple of techniques for multiple counter punching from a block at close range.
At the last half hour of training black belts demonstrated all the techniques that will be shown on the Embu. Some fine tuning was done afterwards and jobs delegated for helpers on the Embu.

A big thank you to everyone that showed up and agreed to help out on the demonstration.

*photo by Stiofan O’Conlon

Gambatte.