A record number of students attended the TKF Kata Course held at Sewell Park Sports Centre where there were 100 people in one sports hall. It was amazing to see so many students, all doing the same kata. It was a great turnout with all grades from white belts to black belts coming along to take part in the course where it was announced that the kata, Gankaku, would be the focus for this course.
Gankaku is a very popular kata amongst the competition circuit where it is translated to ‘crane on a rock’. This comes from the idea that one of the main features of the kata is balance and composure. Especially when Gankaku’s ‘signature’ move involved balancing on one leg whilst performing certain moves.
The students were split by grade and assigned to an instructor who would then teach the kata to the said group of students. The lower grades, white belts to yellow belts, were taken by Jake, Matthew took the green belts to purple and white belts and Danny took the Brown belts and above respectively. The instructors all had different approaches for their respective groups, Danny opt for a technical approach on developing certain parts of the kata and considering that the vast majority of the group had previous exposure to the kata before then moving on to the second hour with bunkai.
Matthew mixed up his lesson slightly, going through certain sections and then further explaining those sections to help his group understand said sections. This included bunkai, timing demonstrations, speed competitions between students and even a ‘Gankaku Spin Off’ Competition where the students had to display their balancing skills in order to win.
Jake went through the kata section by section in order to show the group what moves were required to be performed. This was done taking into account that no one in his group had even done this kata but was safe to say they managed to keep up with the pace of the lesson brilliantly. As always, Jake showed off his flare and enthusiasm with some WKF, competition style bunkai and application for students to try out and then followed up with a performance on the kata himself.
Everyone had a brilliant time, both instructors and students alike’ with lots of great feedback on social media which you can see on our Facebook page. We would like to say a big thank you to everyone who came along to the course on Sunday and we very much look forward to the next course coming up later this year.
