Phoenix Wado Ryu Karate

No Training on Thursday 15th November

admin — Mon, 29 Oct 2012 11:32:43 +0000

Due to the school being used as a Polling Station for the Police and Crime Commissioners elections, our training session on Thursday 15th November 2012 has to be cancelled. Our apologies for any inconvenience caused.

Regards
Clive

Two Castles Run – Charity Fundraiser

admin — Fri, 27 May 2011 15:58:59 +0000

Nine of us are running the Two Castles run between warwick castle and Kenilworth Castle on the 12th June 2011 in Morphsuits for the CLIC Sargant Children with Cancer Charity. If anyone would like to donate money to this worthwhile cause please can you follow our justgiving link please.

Thank You

Clive Lange

Self Assessments

admin — Fri, 15 Apr 2011 12:08:05 +0000

In order to monitor you own performance, and hopefully to encourage you to continue your training outside of the normal training sessions, we have designed a self assessment form for both the Conditioning (Minimum Grading Requirements – Conditioning) and Technical (Minimum Grading Requirements – Techniques) aspects of the new Minimum Grading Requirements. By filling in the form we hope this will allow you to see your improvements and this should provide positive motivation for you and also encourage you to take more control of your own development. If you feel that you have improved and are in a position where you feel that you have reached a suitable standard to progress to the next Grade then a formal assessment with one of the instructors will be arranged to confirm that the appropriate standard of exercises and techniques have been achieved.

Self Assessment Technique Record
Self Assessment Conditioning Record

If you are unsure about the standards required or have any questions come and talk to one of the instructors.

Newsletter – Changes to Gradings and Belts

admin — Tue, 05 Apr 2011 08:13:42 +0000

Dear students and parents,

We are pleased to announce that Phoenix Wado Ryu has just celebrated its 8th year anniversary and we are delighted at how successful we continue to be as a club. We would like to take this opportunity to thank all the students and parents whose support has made the club what it is today.

We have always sought to continually improve our training and over the last year we have changed our methods of training quite substantially in order to produce better results. As a result of this the existing grading criteria no longer accurately reflects our training and therefore it is necessary for this to change. Basically we have simplified the grading criteria and reduced the number of gradings.

Our primary focus for students remains unchanged, we want them to improve in all technical aspects of karate; however we believe that fitness and conditioning (i.e. flexibility, strength, stamina and power) is such an important aspect of martial art training that we have decided to include it within the grading syllabus. In addition, although kata will continue to be taught we have removed it from the gradings syllabus until black belt grading, as this has been a sticking point for a lot of students and for some a source of pressure.

To avoid confusion with the current belts we are introducing new belts as follows:
(1) a white belt presented on joining;
(2) yellow and black stripe belt;
(3) blue and black stripe belt;
(4) red and black stripe belt; and
(5) black belt (which remain unchanged).

At each grading we will expect a student to be able to demonstrate the required karate techniques and fitness and conditioning levels. The syllabus will be available to all students either in a hard copy or online as we want to encourage and motivate students to practice those areas they are not so good at and to more easily monitor their own progress in terms of each of the elements which makes up a grading.

We want to make it clear that all training to date has been important and no skills will be lost because of these changes. We will award the new belts to our students at the level we feel they achieved in accordance with the new syllabus.

We have always believed that the colour of your belt is not as important as what you can actually do and it is more important to us that students want to be good at karate rather than just want the next belt colour without having the skills necessary to achieve that belt. Traditionally there were no coloured belts between white and black belt and whilst we acknowledge this can be useful in terms of motivation, we believe that it can have the opposite effect for some students. Many martial arts clubs use gradings as a source of revenue and will regularly grade students no matter what their ability. As a not for profit club revenue is not our primary motivator and therefore our students will only grade when they can demonstrate they have reached the required standard for that grade. We know that the quality of our students is much higher than many other clubs based on our observations at martial art courses, seminars and when other martial artists have joined our club and we want to maintain this.

No matter what grade a student holds we want them to have the ability to continually learn new techniques and enjoy the variety of aspects of training, whether it is bag work, self defence, sparring, pairs work, kata or fitness.

If anyone has any questions, comments or concerns regarding the changes, please feel free to discuss these with either of us.

Minimum Grading Requirements – Techniques
Minimum Grading Requirements – Conditioning

Yours sincerely

Peter Rixon & Clive Lange
Senior Instructors

“An expert is a master of the basics”

admin — Fri, 04 Feb 2011 11:09:22 +0000

A great quote that I saw that is so applicable to our training and club philosophy. Too often people want to progress too fast or want to move onto more complex techniques or movements without spending time on the basics. In order to be good at karate you must constantly work on your basic techniques and seek to improve them. It is the basic techniques that are the most effective to use and without mastering them you are unlikely to be able to do more advanced techniques anyway. It is often quoted that it takes 10,000 hours or repetitions to master something, that’s a lot of training but it starts with creating a good habit of drilling the basics.

Train Hard People

“WADO RYU KARATE” by Hironori Ohtsuka

admin — Thu, 20 Jan 2011 14:06:58 +0000

A link to an interesting article translating some of Hironori Ohtsuka’s (the founder of Wado Ryu karate) book:

http://www.wadoryu.org.uk/commentary.html

Measuring Resting Heart Rate

admin — Mon, 17 Jan 2011 16:59:14 +0000

The healthier your heart is, the more it can do more in one beat than a heart that’s not as healthy. This is why very fit athletes can have resting heart rates of between 40 to 50 beats per minute compared with the average of 70 bpm for men and 75 bpm for women.

By measuring your resting heart rate it is a good way see how strong your heart is and by measuring it over time it will changes in health. You may notice increases in your resting heart rate when you are fighting an infection or have an illness or injury.

The best time to measure your resting heart rate is first thing in the morning before you get out of bed.

The best way to reduce your resting heart rate, and therefore be healthier, is to exercise. One of the methods we use at Phoenix Wado Ryu to rapidly improve cardiovascular fitness is interval training which alternates high intensity activity with periods of rest or lower intesity activity.

Derren Brown’s Self Defence

admin — Sun, 09 Jan 2011 15:46:04 +0000

Derren Brown has supposedly used this confusion technique to mentally disarm an aggressive drunk during a trip to Wales:

After being challenged verbally by the drunk “Wot you lookin at?”
BD: “The wall outside my house isn’t four foot high.”
Drunk: Paused, “What?!”
BD:”The wall outside my house isn’t four foot high. But I lived in Spain for a bit and you should see the walls there – enormous, right up here!” (hand gesticulating how high the wall was)……….”But here (pointing to a wall) they are tiny, look at those ones!”

The technique supposedly breaks the pattern of an aggressive person who is expecting with their intimidating question (“Wot you lookin at?”) either a passive or aggressive response. By breaking this pattern and having a confusing statement which is out of context with what the drunk was expecting, he has to think about it and is wrong footed and is no longer in control of the conversation.

The result of the situation described above was that the drunk opened up to tell Derren the story of his evening and his problems…

The moral of this story is that we should always look for ways to diffuse aggressive situations where possible rather than escalate them into violent encounters.

Old School British Self Defense

admin — Wed, 29 Dec 2010 11:29:44 +0000

Star Students – Newspaper Article

admin — Tue, 28 Dec 2010 19:14:32 +0000

On 14th December Phoenix Wado Ryu held an awards ceremony to celebrate students achievements in 2010. 3 members were awarded new senior black belt grades. Fred Bailey achieved his 3rd Dan Black Belt, Dave Cleaver his 2nd Dan Black Belt and Craig Lange his 2nd Dan Black Belt. Fred also achieved senior instructor status on the presentation of his 3rd Dan.

All 3 have spent the last year perfecting their martial art skills, specifically undergoing intensive training during the last 6 months, to improve and perfect their techniques, fitness, power, flexibility, accuracy and stamina. All this hard work culminated a 4 ½ hours examination on Saturday 11th December. This was no small achievement for the individuals concerned and also for the Club. Peter Rixon, one of their senior instructors said “they have all shown outstanding determination and pushed themselves beyond their normal limits – they all passed with flying colours and truly deserve their new grade”.

Also on the same day awards were presented to the Club’s 3 junior “Star Students” for 2010. Kieran Jayaram, Joe Derrick and Eloise Downes were awarded a certificate and gift in recognition for their excellent effort, attitude or improvement throughout the year.

http://www.whatsinkenilworth.com/2010/12/phoenix-wado-ryu-karate-in-blackthorn.html