Training session in Frankfurt
March 25 and 26, 2006
On March 25 and 26, we had the pleasure to welcome Kerstin and Bernhard, both now living in Vienna in Austria. Kerstin was living in Frankfurt for many years where she formed a group of jodoka. After she left for Vienna the group was taken over by Thilo and his wife Bianca who also organized the two-day training session.
On Saturday, altogether 10 people from Frankfurt and Heidelberg started as usual with the complete range of Kihon tandoku, going into details for every technique. Explanations were mainly done by Kerstin and Bernhard because we wanted to see if there are any major differences in our techniques. Surprisingly, it was interesting to see that there were only minor differences which could be levelled out easily. In the afternoon, we continued with some Jo exercises and Kata from the first series.
On Sunday morning, we skipped Kihon sotai to concentrate the whole morning on Ken exercises. These exercises are all too often neglected and I must admit that, due to only a small amount of time, we in Heidelberg are a little bit behind it. So, this was a good opportunity to revise these techniques.
After lunch in a Thai restaurant, we mainly concentrated on Kata by dividing the people in several groups according to their progress. This was a quite intensive session and I was also able to continue and refresh Kage.
This was a very fruitful and motivating training session thanks to Kerstin and Bernhard who brought some "fresh air" from the Vienna group. Our regards and thanks also go to Brigitte who kept her group at a top level.
We hope we can meet again in Frankfurt some day.
Matthias Wenderoth, SMR Oku-iri
Fédération Européenne de Jodo / European Jodo Federation