2018 has come quick, after a great closure to the 2017 karate calendar with the annual Christmas party and training at cotton tree, we also had a water bomb fight held at the dojo where a lot of us enjoyed cooling down after training.

We all enjoyed a couple weeks off for Christmas and new year’s holiday, many parties were had and plenty of tasty foods were consumed in large quantities I’m sure. Leaving myself at least, full of food and muscles lazy. Its great getting caught up in relaxing and losing track of time, as I didn’t feel the transition from 2017 to 2018.

Kicking off the New year though, we jumped straight into a 2-week intensive at our dojo, turning Christmas flab to ab. It’s always a challenging 2 weeks getting your body back into drive after getting accustomed to sleeping in until 10 and playing video games most days (for me anyway). And it was not until now for me that it’s felt like a new year, when university and karate has started back up and kicked into gear.

Its great being back in the dojo and seeing everyone training hard, and continuing to develop their fitness and technique, I can already see improvements in many people after training hard in 2017 and having some time off to distil what we all learnt last year.

Week 1 of the intensive has swiftly come to an end and I have enjoyed returning to the basics, focusing on shime and the path of each step, flexibility in my legs with shiko dachi splits, revisiting kata’s (specifically Chinto). Though my highlight for this week is the kobudo class we had today, I love learning new kata with Nunchaku and Sai, it’s always an… interesting experience!

It’s exciting, the prospect of a new year and what it will bring to all of us, I know everyone will continue to work hard and push their boundaries. I’d like to wish everyone a great 2018 and I look forward to seeing everyone in the dojo over the next week of the intensive and throughout the year!