After a long drive down, I arrived with Scott, Garry (my instructor) and Gill at around 7pm. We dumped a few things in our room and ordered a chinese. They all wanted to crack open the beers but I decided to lay off the drink, at least initially. I got a lot of stick from the guys but they got used to it after a day or two.
From left to right: Me, Garry (Instructor), Scott, Gill
Training starts out at 7.30am with a gruelling exercise session down in a muddy field by the river Ogwen. I'm so glad that I was warned to bring waterproofs with me. On the first morning I yawned my way down to the field and the first thing Peter boomed out was "Press-up position!". I looked down at the wet, muddy grass which was covered in goose poo and thought to myself "I'm not getting down there!". Of course, when in the presence of Peter Spanton, you just do what you're told! I started to get used to that by about day 3.
After the exercises, the early morning session continues with lots of sparring. This is where you tend to pick up most of your bruises for the week and by the end of the week I had plenty. Unfortunately for some, it can get a little rough and some people come away with injuries. For me personally I find that I have an advantage being a small woman - the guys tend to go easy on me! I really enjoyed all the sparring and it helped boost my confidence and I'm now quite keen to have a go at it in competitions.
Mawashigeri against Jenny (Yellow Belt)
Another Mawashigeri - left leg this time against Bruce (White belt)Only the early morning session is held in the field. The other two are held in the car park which was equally bizarre. What I found really strange was people referring to the car park as the "dojo" and bowing when they entered it for training. I didn't quite get used to that... We had two daytime sessions, one in the morning and the other in the afternoon and both were around 2 hours long.
Back home in class, we also have two hour sessions and sometimes these can be extremely exhausting and I imagined that we'd have that kind of intensity for each session at Ogwen. However, it really was no where near as tough as some people had led me to beleive it would be. The sessions typically started out with some basics and lots of combinations. One thing Peter loves to do is to give us increasingly complex combinations to test our mental acuity as well as the physical. Usually I could cope with about 6 techniques, but as the numbers started to rise towards 10-12 I struggled.
I could do them if I took it slowly but as the calls came faster and faster I'd soon get myself into a pickle. Personally I don't like to stand there like a lemon and looking confused so my personal tactic was to just try my best and keep moving so in the end I'd just make it up. I'd chuck in a gyakazuki here and a mawashigeri there and hope that I ended up in the correct position at the end. This tactic worked for a while but I was caught out on one occasion when Peter stood right in front of me to watch me. I got part way through, make a mistake and he laughed and said "It's all gone wrong now hasn't it Caroline?" I made the mistake of saying that I was just making it up at that point which resulted in a few extra pushups for me!
During the second day time session on Monday it rained the whole time and at one point I remember thinking to myself "what on earth am I doing here?". That evening I was feeling quite homesick and unsociable so I stayed in the caravan while the others went down to the club house for a drink. That was the low point of the week for me.
That night it rained constantly and I remember waking up at 7am, sitting in my room thinking that I just didn't want to go out into that wet field again. But it really wasn't that bad and I actually had some very good fights that morning and came back feeling much better.
A big focus of the day time sessions was kata. I really enjoyed this as we didn't just practice the basic moves of the kata but we spent a lot of time breaking them down and looking at how they applied to a real combat situation. This is known as bunkai and it really helps you to learn the kata so that when you perform it you start to look like you are really doing effective karate rather than just blindly going through the motions.
Practising Bunkai with Jenny, my fist is supposed to be aimed at her head!This particular course had many junior grades. There were several white, yellow and orange belts which meant that we had many opportunities to work together and we didn't feel as though we were being neglected for the black belts which is how I felt after the kata course in December. Another plus point for me personally as that the kata that we focused on for the majority of the week was Pinan Yondan which I had only started to learn the week before. So that gave me an excellent opportinuty to get a rudimentary knowledge of it and its application.
Peter is a suberb instructor and there is nothing like getting personal tutition from the 8th Dan chief instructor. There are many times in class when I have a question and somebody perhaps one or two grades higher than me tries to answer it but isn't quite sure themselves. At Ogwen I had many opportunities to ask lots of questions of Peter himself which gave me complete confidence in the answer.
4th Dan Shawn helping me with Bunkai, not sure why I am giggling!By Tuesday night we were all starting to feel the aches and pains. Three of us went out for a pub dinner and I had my first drop of alcohol then. That must have loosened me up a bit because by Wednesday morning most of the aches had gone and I felt raring to go again.
The weather also picked up a bit on Wednesday morning. Down in the field the mist had cleared and we saw some truly stunning views of the mountains. After the morning session I went out for a nice long walk to take in some of the scenery. I only wish I had brought my camera with me.
I don't remember exactly what we did in every session but there were plenty of memorable moments throughout the week. One particularly witty comment from Peter stood out. I was practicing bunkai with a group and I performed a technique and did a kiai. Peter walked past me at that point and said "where's your kiai?". "I did do a kiai", I protested. "That wasn't a kiai, that was a cockroaches fart!" came the response! I have a new louder kiai now!
One thing that I wanted to get out of the sparring sessions in particular was the opportunity to spar with some black belts, especially Garry. You always learn more when you are pitted against an opponent that is better than you, and that applies in any sport or game. I asked Garry on Wednesday if I could spar him but Thursday morning we didn't get the chance as we did one-on-one work with the same partner throughout the session. However, we did pick up a new form of sparring in that session - seated sparring using hands only.
So, Friday morning was my last chance and when we were told to partner up I ran over to Garry to grab him. However, we didn't spar straight away. First we did some practicing of the take-down techniques we had learnt in the day time session the day before. This was great fun as I actually got to throw my instructor on the floor several times :-) Of course, he sent me flying plenty of times too. Garry is quite a big guy and one on occasion I struggled so much to throw him over that I went with him, and landed on top of him dangerously close to the river!
Me throwing Garry, doesn't look too happy does he? :)
Garry teaching me how its really done!We did get to do some sparring though and he taught me a lot, including some techniques for dealing with a long guard which is something I often come up against when I'm sparring with some 6 foot guy.
One Ogwen tradition that I have known about since last September is that "Ogwen Virgins" always get thrown in the river at the end of the last early morning session. Garry and I had finished sparring and at the end of the session Peter has us back down on the grass doing a few last pushups and situps just for good luck I think. The session came to a close and Peter shouted out "You know what you have to do!". Garry grabbed my foot and I suddenly had visions of being dragged in backwards by my ankles! Gill was also approaching with a menacing look on her face! Not wanting to be taken prisoner, I managed to wriggle free and then ran towards the river and just jumped in myself! Oooh chilly :)
This river isn't cold at all! RWARRR!When I got out I was soaked through to my chest so I ran up to Gill, and gave her a soggy hug. I made sure that Garry and Scott also got some of my river water by practicing some front kicks with my water-logged shoes in their direction!
The day time sessions on Friday were relatively easy and we had the chance to do some recap work, polishing the new material we had learnt during the week. As the session drew to a close Peter geared us up for what he calls his "last blast" where he pushes you to the limit to see what kind of spirit and determination people show when tired. At the end Peter thanked us all for our attention and then asked us if we'd like to come back next year. This question had special meaning on this occasion because this year was supposed to be Peter's last as he finds it tougher now as he advances in years. In that moment he transformed from a towering Karate Master into a sweet old man who couldn't bear to give up his passion. The moment actually brought a tear to my eye.
Emotional, we clambered back into our caravan and let our hair down. Gill broke out the gin and concocted some god-awful rocket fuel which warmed our cockles! Another tradition of the week-long Ogwen course is that students who are 1st Kyu or above can request to do a dan grading here. Dan gradings at Ogwen are like no other. They are performed barefoot on the tarmac at the very end of the course. In this case, it began half an hour after the last session finished.
There were four black belts grading and it was a stunning spectacle to watch. Peter suddenly did not look like a sweet old man anymore! He pushed those guys to such lenghs that it was painful to watch. They were utterly exhausted and yet he kept pushing and pushing them. Three on on one sparring immediaely followed by Kushanku with application which is the longest kata in Higashi. The highlight for me was watching them perform defences against particular techniques. Forget your basic block followed by gyakasuki, these guys used fantastic techniques to destroy their opponents and yet, even though they were deathly tired, they managed to keep their techniques under control at all times and not hurt each other. Some of the sweeps and throws in the particular were simply amazging to watch. Results were to be announced that night in the club house.
We stumbled back to our caravan now even more wobbly than before after consuming more of Gil's rocket fuel. I'm not entirely sure how it started but we ended up in an extremely mucky banana fight! I'm sure I woke up on the sofa at one point with banana in my hair and a biscuit on my head!!
Gill's rocket fuel... before the banana fight!The drink had gone way to my head by then and the evening at the club house was a bit of a blur. Peter was presented with a nice photo of the whole course which had been taken earlier in the week and the results of the gradings were announced and all four dan grades had passed their gradings.
The great man himself (Peter Spanton) awarding one of the well-deserved Dan GradesFor coloured belts below brown, Peter does an assessment during the week and he gives feedback on your progress to your instructor. In some cases he will actually award you a new grade. When Garry gave my license back to to me I looked at it but was so drunk by that point that I didn't really know what I was looking at. Apparently Peter had initially upgraded me from a 2nd class Yellow to first class but had later had a change of heart and upgraded me to Orange belt! This came as quite a shock as I had only had my yellow belt for two weeks and usually there is supposed to be a minimum of three months between belts.
This was a very proud moment for me and rounded off the week nicely. Overall, I had a great time, learnt a lot and I made some new friends too. I'll certainly be going back for the weekend course in September but I'll be sure to bring my camera with me!
All the girls
All the Dan grades
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