Nintai Dojo is run by myself and Jason White,
We often brag to each other about how great our students are in class and I chat
with him a great deal about how awesome they do in class. Jason teaches the
Monday nights and I take up the Thursdays and Saturday classes. One of the
secrets to our teaching is we DON’T share with each other what we are going to
be teaching. To me this is the best way of teaching because it gives the
students variety. I don’t like when you have a congruent teaching group that
focuses on the day to day teaching and does the same thing every day! However,
we did sort of work with each other to get our students ready for the “Dingman
Cup Tournament” held this past June 1st.
Our little Dojo has about 20 active
members in the club and we made a concerted effort to get our students ready
for the event and the students put the hard work in and did a bunch of
conditioning on top of the regular focus on good technical training. We are a
super traditional Dojo that focuses on improving our students Karate on a
technical level, we don’t often do tournaments and we don’t teach sport Karate,
the JKAMB prides itself on being traditional Karate and using Traditional
Karate even in our tournaments.
Our members did extremely well and one
of our students even took the Dingman Cup for best all around athlete of the
event. Jennifer has been training with us for several years and has her 1st
Kyu brown belt and is preparing for her Shodan. She is a hardworking, funny kid
that is faster than lightning. Her hard work earned her gold in both Kata and
Kumite! While I bug her about her Kata her Kumite is so good she beat kids that
were her rank and made them look like they were standing still! She blew past several athletes from other
clubs with so much ease that next year I will have to put her in the black belt
division or it wont be fair.
Our other brown belt Emma is a 3rd
Kyu and came in 4th in Kata to someone who has been a brown belt
longer than Emma has been training and honestly, I thought she took that one.
She also got her bronze in Kumite proving her length and timing was on
point! I can see great things for Emma
and with a bit of training she will be beating seniors soon! When she first got
her brown belt we noticed a huge jump in her skill level and I thought she
would be a champion at Kata because she is super intelligent and has awesome
attention to detail, she has however shocked me in that her Kumite is better
than I expected! She proved to me and Jason that her skills in fighting are
part of her being so smart as she plays chess with people when sparring and
uses great strategy to win.
For fun we threw our Black belt Terry
into the Adult female Kata division, this year she could not do Kumite as she
had a broken finger, but she came down and did her Kata and garnered a silver
medal. The ironic part is she just started learning Empi a few months back and
has a way to go but her determination and practice earned her the medal this
time out. She is normally the work horse that goes into Kumite and relishes it
in class as much as she does at the tournament. She pushes herself harder than
any of the younger Karateka in the club and earned my respect a long time ago. She
fought members from other clubs and earned the silver she got!
Damon and his sister Rayna both did very
well as well. Damon entered the Kata and Kumite and earned a bronze for his
Kata, which is not normally his strong suit in class. He however earned a
Silver in a deep division for kumite and I was very impressed with his form
when sparring, he will be a force when he grows a bit and figures out his
technical points. He is a natural athlete and has explosive strength when he
wants to. His sister Rayna is what we would call a “thinker” and often an over
thinker. She was in a smaller division and psyched herself out, but after a bit
of a chat she went into the Kumite division and got a silver! Rayna is one of the smartest kids I know, and
she is probably the one that has the most medically to overcome, but she pushes
when you get her in the right mood and shows some sparks of brilliance in Kata
and her kumite, if pushed is on point as well. I really look forwards to what
these two purple belts will do when they both grow into their bodies a bit and
have time to mature in Karate.
Two of our Novice (white to Green)
students did very well in a HUGE division. Patrick and CJ came in Gold and
Bronze in Kumite respectively and Patrick really shocked me. He was one of the
smaller kids in the division and stepped up big time. He is one of those kids
that has great form, works hard and has fun. Patrick is one of those kids that
99% of the time you dream of having in your class and he listens to you 100% of
the time. Young kid with a bright future in Karate! CJ is our Tasmanian Devil. The kid is so much
fun and he works really hard but he is a wild card. He shows up and you never
know whats gonna happen. AND he is really good when he tries and pushes others
to do well. His kumite is great because
he is one of the fearless kids. The ones that you know will go hard and not be
scared of anything in Kumite. He does not mind getting hit a bit and he will
drive in all the time. We need to work on his form but he is on point to be really
good at Karate too.
Last but not least is Qetsu, one of our
advanced (Brown) Cadets (teens) who is built like a tank! The kid is solid and
hits like a mule! He is not the quickest, but he is super coachable. He was so
nervous doing free against brown belts, but he earned his gold with hard nosed
Karate. He chased a kid out of bounds three times and got him DQ’d and then
beat two others with solid form and power. His in class Karate is normally
typical teen, you don’t know if he is trying or just goofing off a bit and
often it’s a bit of both, but he buckles down, and you see him when he is doing
things he likes and the power he can generate is awesome. I will be working on
speed and explosiveness with him, but this big rig of a kid is going to be
something when he gets a bit more explosiveness into his Karate.
Jason and I could not be prouder of our
members. They all did so good in their respective divisions and we know that it’s
a growing time for us, we are focusing more and more on traditional tournament
prep and training and we hope to help our members do even better in the future.
Our focus as always will be doing JKA
Style Shotokan in the Dojo with the students and pushing them to be better,
reach their potentials and enjoy Karate, but we also want to encourage them to
push themselves out of their comfort zones, which is what tournaments are all
about…fun and adding pressure to your training.
Our new group of students that did not
compete also got an eyeful of the tournament and we have several who are
interested in doing the next one as well as our regular membership. Tournaments
in our organization are traditional and go hand in hand with Dojo training,
they don’t shift to sport and change your style, they push you to build, be
better and improve over all in Karate. It’s a physical training event and not
what we normally focus on teaching, but it does help in teaching students how
to be better sportsmen/women and how to train to be better in general.
We are so proud of those that competed,
and we know that all our members will benefit going forwards from training for
traditional tournaments. It’s the results we care about, not the medals but the
leap in understanding and training we see in our students.
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