(May 12)

News

Black Belt Tests for Junior Students

A massive well done to the 6 juniors who tested to shodan during Sensei Ken Robson’s visit last month. I was very proud of all of you and the hard work you put in, namely;

Lucy Beveridge
Ella Hobson
Will Squire
Ben Hookway
Joe McCaffrey
Daniel Treanor

And a massive good luck to Ebony who is testing at the end of the month.

Adults

Summer School

Date: 28th June – 1st July
Venue: Eagle dojo, west bridgford

The shudokan summer school is THE Yoshinkan oriented event to attend in the UK each year. It’s crunch time so if you want to come its time to let me know.

Cost: £130 plus accom (roughly £100-£120)

The higlight of the Shudokan year. 3 Seventh Dans sharing the mat for 4 Days. If you’ve never been before I urge you to come along for a number of reasons. Not least the fact that Sensei Thambu and Sensei Mustard are two of the best practitioners of Aikido I’ve ever come across, and Sensei ken is a truly formidable martial artist. So sign up and spend a long weekend training and socialising with some of the best teachers on the planet.

Please RSVP via email or text to: shudokandevon@gmail.com or 07860546790

All

Summer Timetable

As there is only a small change to junior and adult start times I’ve decided to roll this out next week, 14th May onwards.

Of note is the new Monday class from 6-7pm, Wednesday morning class from 7:30-8am, Saturday 12-1 weapons class replacing the 4pm session (all adults) and for the juniors the Wednesday Cobrakids is pushed back to 6:15pm making all three weekday sessions the same time.

So here it is:

Monday

Adults/cadets: 6-7pm

Tuesday

Little dragons: 5:30-6:15pm

Cobrakids: 6:15-7pm

Adults/cadets: 7-8pm

Free practice: 8-8:30pm

Wednesday

Hump Day Wake Up class (adults; 15 minutes meditation and 15 minutes of stretching/gentle aerobic training): 7:30-8am

Cobrakids: 6:15-7pm

Adults/cadets: 7-8pm

Free practice: 8-8:30pm

Thursday

Little dragons: 5:30-6:15pm

Cobrakids: 6:15-7pm

Adults/cadets: 7-8pm

Free practice: 8-8:30pm

Friday

No training

Saturday

Little dragons: 9:30-10:15am

Cobrakids: 10:30-11:30am

Free practice: 11:30-12pm

Adults/cadets (weapons training): 12-1pm

Demo competition

Due to adult and junior tests I’m postponing the competition date aiming for the middle of June. I would like small teams or pairs to get creative and really show me what they’ve got.

Demo Competition Sections

Kihon

Participants wishing to take part in the Kihon section of the competition must demonstrate the following:

Kihon Dosa (right side only)

Katate Mochi Shihonage 1

Shomen Uchi Ikkajo 2

Shomen Uchi Kotegaeshi 2

Ukemi

In the falling competition students will demonstrate the following:

8th Kyu – 6th Kyu

Koho Ukemi (back drops)

Zenp hyaku Ukemi (forward Rolls)

5th Kyu – 1st Kyu

As above plus:

Rear side falling

Flip Falls

Jiyu Waza

In the Jiyu Waza section no restrictions are placed. Any teams wishing to enter this competition must speak with Sensei about it personally.

If you would like to enter a team pick up a form at the dojo or fill it out online.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dGhtdmdPSWR6ZWFncmRkeUR0dmx6OFE6MQ#gid=0

All questions please direct them to:

Andrew Medland

shudokandevon@gmail.com

07860546790

And add:

@shudokandevon on twitter

www.facebook.com/aikdodevon

Osu

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(March 5th)

Adults

Soke Stratton Memorial Seminar and Get Together
Date: March 17th
Times: 12- 5pm and 7:30pm
Venue: dojo, Barnstaple and ‘velvet and vanilla’, Bideford

Soke Stratton gave us all the gift of aikido and dedicated his life to our little dojo and the wider organisation.

Please RSVP via email or text to: shudokandevon@gmail.com or 07860546790

Ladies Only Self Defence Class

Date: 12th March 8pm
Location: dojo

Sensei Med delivers a pragmatic look at self defence. Aimed specifically at women.

Please RSVP via email or text to: shudokandevon@gmail.com or
07860546790

Juniors

Holiday Club

Dates: 2nd -6th april
Times: LD 11-1 CK 11-3 daily
Cost: LD/CK £10/15 per day or £40/£50 for the five days

Take a break and give your kids a fantastic experience all at the same time. Buddies come free! Need data files for buddies though..

Please RSVP via email or text to: shudokandevon@gmail.com or
07860546790

Mama madness

Date: 15th March
Time: junior classes

To celebrate mothering Sunday all parents are invited onto the mat to enjoy a class with their children.

Please RSVP via email or text to: shudokandevon@gmail.com or
07860546790

All

Sport Relief – pulling my chair out…

Date: Friday 16th March 1730
Where: peach beauty salon

Please go to my giving page: https://my.sportrelief.com/pullingmyhairout

And check out the charity event. Also… Donate

All questions please direct them to:

Andrew Medland
shudokandevon@gmail.com
07860546790

And add:
@shudokandevon on twitter
www.facebook.com/aikdodevon

Osu

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To make this interesting I thought it would be cool if we worked in teams or pairs and held a competition at the end of the month.

So get yourselves together and pick a demonstration topic… More details to come

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Hate it:

It’s so hard! Every time you practice it your own faults jump out at your brain and you start to sweat because of the effort you put into the deep Kamae and the intensity of the movement.

It’s not ‘fun’! Unless there is some exercise or gimmick thrown into the practice it can be quite tedious. However if you feel this way you are probably not focussing on the right things. Also by making it fun you will massively miss out on some of the important aspects to study.

Love It:

It’s so hard! After 14 years of practising it continues to teach me. I can’t predict the future but I am confident that this will continue for the rest of my Aikido Career. In fact it is really starting to get interesting for me now..

It is simply a masterpiece, a work of genius.

The Kihon Dosa was developed by the early Yoshinkan Instructors (Notably Kyoichi Inoue Sensei and Takashi Kushida Sensei) and I personally think that to call it ‘a work of genius’ is barely adequate. From what I gather it was constructed to teach the police force Aikido basics.

Can you think of a more difficult task. Aikido is by no means a short road. To teach the true principles of Aikido through 6 movements (successfully) and with the proper understanding to have built a movement that allows one to test, correct, trouble shoot and improve your Aikido technique for the rest of your life is nothing short of inspired.

The level of understanding of the basics to have injected them into the Kihon Dosa in this manner is currently beyond my comprehension.

So to release this pattern into the world was indeed their Aikido duty.. But it must be difficult. Because, let’s face it, we all do it wrong!

In class the other day I referenced this problem like this:

“Imagine handing the Mona Lisa to a class room of 6 year olds with no paper and lots of crayons..”

So I urge you, each and every Aikidoka in earnest, to seek the proper understanding of Kihon Dosa every single time you practice. Practice with intent and vigour and don’t be satisfied with a half arsed approach. Also, if you have questions, then ask your teacher.

Any way I just wanted to share my thoughts.. Osu!

Med

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For most people Budo is an esoteric and abstract word or it is finite and means ‘Martial Arts’.

As western instructors we have a new challenge, if you care to put it upon yourself to do so. It is not enough to teach moves and martial values. It is not enough to live humbly and try your best to be kind, honourable etc.

"Years ago I saw an aikido instructor named
Tadashi Abe in France. He was a true warrior in
every way. He was a great example of a man
with martial spirit flaming in his belly while the
spirit of harmony was visible in his eye. He was
a real credit to Ueshiba Sensei's technical and
spiritual legacy. He is 100% samurai!"

YUKIYOSHI TAKAMURA (via AikiJournal)

I love this quote. As a martial artist, and as a teacher it provides me with a clear vision of how I want to be. The flame in the belly and the kindness in his eyes are almost tangible and palpable metaphors.

To digress, Budo is a deeply ingrained belief system, a set of instincts and an expansive sense of awareness and consideration. It is also a delicate flower that will be gone with one bad day of over feeding or under exposure to the sun.

I have glimpsed it in others, and endeavour to find it for myself. I see no juxtaposition with my culture. I think this is very important. While I confess an interest in Japanese culture and language this only extends far enough so I can check my understanding of Budo. I do not think its right to parody the Japanese, as the author of the above quote later comments about.

Sometimes I feel like it must be impossible to enjoy a life of Budo. To live your entire life in servitude and self criticism sounds like a nightmare. But this is only the surface appearance of the ‘life’.

I am essentially a servant, to my students and to my teachers. Read that sentence again though. This time with a different intonation on my ‘voice’. Read it as though I’m talking with a sense of pride and honour. It is an honour to serve my students and my teachers.

Now, just for a bit of a game, apply this concept to yourself and then expand it to your entire life. Now apply this to everyone on the planet. It is a world order envisaged by the likes of John Lennon (lets face it, not a well known master of Budo). An entire planet living for others.

It frustrates me though. There is something much more difficult to get across about Budo. The only way to pass this to others is through training. Having had the tiniest glimpse at what I believe to be that right path I find myself in fear of it being lost forever. One generation of complacency and it is gone.

So lets not be complacent. In our generation seek to carry that flame in our bellies and spirit of peace in our eyes.

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………………………………………………………………..

I’ve been studying Aikido as part of the scholarship for about a year at the Dojo. Sensei Andrew Medland offered me the scholarship as a way for me to train even though I couldn’t afford the full mat fees and although many of the jobs I’ve had to do over the past year have been mundane, (such as the cleaning and registers) I wouldn’t change the experience for anything.

 

Aikido, like any martial art, has amazing benefits and the scholarship offers many more. I’ve had to help teach the children some techniques and movements, occasionally when I’ve only just seen them myself (I would like to point out I only assist in teaching the kids, I’ve never taken a lesson). This has worked wonders on my confidence and I think it has helped me understand Aikido better (whether that shows in my movements though is a different story). I enjoy most aspects of Aikido, like the feeling of being thrown well, especially when you can’t feel yourself being thrown until it’s too late and you’re already in the air. If you nail the landing then it has to be the single most amazing feeling you can get!

 

I suffer from a stutter and the scholarship has helped so much with it. I have had to talk to people showing an interest in Aikido; taking their name, contact details, booking them a time for their introduction, and general admin work. I often try to avoid situations where I have to talk to strangers for fear of stuttering, so being forced into that situation helped with my confidence which greatly helped with my stutter.

 

In the past year of Aikido I have made many new friends, both in the adults and in the cadets class (12-15 y/o) there is something with throwing each other around like rag dolls that (thankfully!) creates a lot of trust which means you often end up with good friends both on and off the mats.

 

It’s not all fun and games though, there are some negatives. For me the most frustrating thing about Aikido is the bruises I seem to suffer from. I bruise easier than an over ripe peach, meaning that even simple grabs or meets create bruises on my arms. Not to mention that regardless of the amount of times I have told people exactly how I got the bruises and the fact that I bruise easily, people still seem to think my instructors and fellow Aikidoka are bullies. Which is obviously really annoying.. However me and my mum have had many jokes over my bruises, occasionally at my expense and sometimes my mum refers to Andrew as a bully. (which isn’t true! But it is funny.)

 

Also I get rather frustrated with the breakfalls, how can something so simple be so difficult?! Although my falls are improving, it does feel like slow progress much of the time, this is very frustrating as there are many throws I’d love to experience but I lack the confidence to fall from them (like left flips or high back falls, Sensei makes them look stupidly easy and they really aren’t) and even something as simple as a left or right fall can hurt if it’s not done right (unless it’s just me doing them really badly).

 

I went to the Dojo on a whim, I thought it looked interesting but like many of us I had my doubts as to it’s effectiveness. Yet after that first session I was hooked! I loved it as much in that first session as I do now. I must be honest and say I expected to get bored of it fairly soon, that I loved the novelty of Aikido rather than Aikido itself, but the more I trained the more I realised that there’s so much more than what you first see, and that fascinates me

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