ABSOLUTE ASCENDANCY

Koshiki Karatedo Seminar Report (WKKF)
Australia, New South Wales, Inverell, April 2019
Hosted by Nick King’s Lifestyle Centre 

Commencing Operation . . . 

Overview

As a final challenge during my half year journey in Australia, I met up with Shihan Nick King to undergo some intensive Koshiki Karatedo training. I stayed over with his family from Thursday afternoon to Saturday morning, with a solid five hours of training on Friday. It wasn’t all hardcore stuff though, I spent the evenings playing some games with the family which I really enjoyed and allowed for the right balance of training hard and having some fun.

Thursday

After driving for over 3 hours, I arrived and was met with a warm welcome by Shihan Nick, his wife Laura and their three children. I get shown around the house, and I meet their entourage of pets. Three dogs, two canaries, a cat and even a kangaroo by the name of Bruce! Couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw him, and I was given the opportunity to feed him some grass.

Shihan Nick and I then drive off to the supermarket to get some food for the evening meal. We were stopped and led into conversations three times by Nick’s acquaintances while picking out groceries. A popular man for sure, at least in his home town! I end up eating a delicious homemade tofu salad. I was especially impressed because they had never prepared tofu before.

I play a game of chess with their seven-year-old son, Sammy the samurai, and I am defeated! I had such an early lead but overextended too much, which left my king open and vulnerable. A lesson in humility for sure, and I anticipate great feats in his future. I will be seeking a rematch when I next return! The family and I then played a few rounds of Charades, which turned out to be a whole lot of fun.

Friday

Egg on toast for breakfast, the eggs are from Shihan Nick’s parent’s farm, so they are exceptionally nutritious and filling. After eating, it is straight to Nick King’s Lifestyle Centre for the first of three training sessions. Sensei Wok (Greg Smith) meets us there, and I am put through Koshiki fighting drills for two hours. High-intensity bursts with short rest periods in between were the de facto regime for this training session. I warm up with a minute on / off, striking a punching bag, which lasts around 16 minutes or so in total. I then do some pad work with Sensei Wok, which highlights a couple of vulnerabilities that I have in my fight technique. Leaning in too far when punching and sometimes landing crab like after throwing a roundhouse which causes a delay in my follow up action.

Shihan Nick and I then put on our Bogus (chest guards) and the remaining time is spent running through numerous fighting drills and combinations for Koshiki Karate and focusing on eradicating my weaknesses as mentioned above. We covered many scenarios for getting off the attacking line and countering various attacks. I was placed in situations where I had to either counter or avoid quickly after throwing a roundhouse to force me to avoid the crab-like stance after the roundhouse is thrown. We also did the classic drill where I would have to quickly pick which side to counterattack, which can turn into a 50/50 guessing game.

The session ends with a three minute round on the punching bag, wearing the full Koshiki Anzen Bogu (helmet and chest guard) which was definitely tough as hell as a final act for the two-hour training session. I survive it though, and we then go grab lunch and take a reprieve at home before returning to the dojo for the second two-hour training session. At this stage, I am feeling pretty wiped as I hadn’t really done any intensive Koshiki training while in Australia. Fortunately, this second session was split into two segments. Kata and weapon conditioning. I get a refresher on Kudaka no Chinto that I had learned just before flying out to Australia but subsequently forgotten it. After relearning the kata, I perform it several times at high intensity until I eventually nail it with a flawless performance. I was given more time to rest in between each run through which I was very thankful for. Shihan Nick then straps a Bogu onto a punching bag for me to perform various hand techniques to condition my hands, fists, and elbows for striking. It also promotes body coordination when trying to hit an unpredictable, moving target. The punching bag will sway and spin when struck, which moves the striking zone on the Bogu around haphazardly.

The final one-hour session is a striking pad work conditioning class. As it was Easter, the class was relatively small, but it was an excellent way to end the day of intense training. I donned a pair of boxing gloves and then proceed to do many striking drills on the punching bags and partner work with the punch pads.

I survive the intensive training day and am rewarded with a takeaway meal from the best Thai restaurant in town. The family game for the evening is Uno, and this was a real blast! It has been such a long time since I’ve played Uno and I had forgotten how utterly savage the game can be. Sammy the samurai was unfortunately sat between Shihan Nick and me. One game, I drew into two copies of the wild draw 4 and Sammy was hit with both. To make it worse, Shihan Nick ended up playing three copies of the draw 2 cards, all aimed at Sammy (at some stage the turn direction was reversed). Even after drawing 14 or so cards, Sammy managed to eventually drop his hand down to 1 (while fighting for third place). How he managed that was beyond me, but he took it all like a champ. Life lesson from Uno – sometimes life dumps a whole lot of crap on you, and you just have to work your way through and deal with it all.

Saturday and Conclusion

Egg on toast again for breakfast before heading off to Shihan Nick’s parent’s farm for a brief visit before saying my goodbyes and heading home. I had an incredible time and will definitely aim to swing down and train again with Shihan Nick King when I next visit Australia.

Mission complete – Overlord Drakow signing out