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Hello and welcome, this is Battle Ready, I’m Ciara Morrison, and I want to talk about the last week, because the last week was incredible. So if you’re new here, I have a couple of things that I tend to focus on. I work in human resources and operations, I’m a psychologist, I’m into fitness in a huge way, I do an awful lot of martial arts, and the final area is very much focused on cancer, because I’ve been there, got the t-shirt, as they say, and I do try

and share my experience. All of this is my own opinion, just before we kind of get too far ahead of ourselves, but I want to talk about the last week. So a couple of years ago, I was involved in the European Gashaku as an organiser.

So when I go along to these events, I do have a slightly different lens to look at things.

And it’s always about learning; it’s always about sharing your knowledge and understanding, and I have to say, oh my lord, this team, they smashed it out of the park. So what are we talking about here? For those of you who don’t do karate.

This is an event which I think is very unusual in a lot of ways. And it’s also a very privileged event because a lot of us don’t have a huge amount of holidays.

If we’ve got families and all sorts of other commitments going on, to take a week and to spend it doing your hobby with four or five hundred other people, I don’t think it happens all of that much. I really don’t. I don’t think it happens so often.

So essentially, within our organisation, so I’m part of Iogkf, for those of you again who maybe don’t know me or don’t understand this whole world, and each country within Europe will bid to host this event, and you have to have certain things, obviously good infrastructure, a good training space, and then you can kind of put your bid together. However, it’s much more than that.

If you can imagine catering for four hundred people for five hours training a day, oftentimes with additional classes on as well, plus all of the entertainment stuff that goes on in the evening, and selling your local area, then it becomes a huge

undertaking. Plus you got to register everybody, you’ve got to get all their names, you’ve got to make sure you’ve got welcome packs for everybody. It’s huge.

And I’m sitting here on the Sunday, having flown home last night, just completely in awe of what all of these guys achieved. You will find some podcasts that I recorded with some of the event organisers. Absolutely incredible attention to detail.

So let me take a step back. I booked this course ages back. It was one that I really wanted to do.

I did have experience of going to the Netherlands to train previously, but not with Iogkf. It would have been with the likes of Sensei Kasé, et cetera, and Sensei Dirk Heene. And it was just a wonderful experience.

And Schiphol Airport is just vast, you know? And it’s been years since I’ve been there. And going back was quite full of nostalgia and thinking, I was seeing signs to cities that I’ve been to and trained with.

And so I, this time, and this is one thing that I found has really worked with some of these gasshuku. I looked at where the training venue was, because these guys have put together a wonderful website. Looked at where the event was being held.

That’s the coffee clink, by the way. And then booked an Airbnb nearby. And I’d looked at an awful lot of the recommendations.

And everybody spoke so well about this place. And it looked quite quirky and interesting. And it was kind of behind the house of the guy who ran it.

It could not have been any better. I stayed with a very good friend of mine from Germany. And essentially we were kind of in a loft.

There was chickens running around outside. This had everything you needed. And the one thing that I will not compromise going to a Gashagu is a washing machine.

It’s the first thing I put into a filter. We booked this place, as I say, absolutely outstanding. And then things happen during the week, don’t they?

Things just kind of come together. And one of the things I love about Iogkf, especially number one, it’s the range of Gashagu and courses that go on around Europe.

But it’s also this whole idea of the message that comes from the senior leaders, from Nakamura Sensei. I think he spoke a little bit about it on a previous podcast that I recorded with him.

But it’s this whole coming together, we can achieve more together, everybody has a place.

You know, and looking around the room, you could see everybody from beginner right the whole way through to people who are actually there to take to attend a grading for 8th Dan. And then plus you have all of the instructors.

So there’s a huge plethora of instructors that are chosen for this event. And it’s very much around making sure that they are, you know, of a level that can impart information, but also that they have the ability to teach.

And I think that’s really important. But I’m kind of getting ahead of myself. So once we had arrived, we arrived on the Sunday.

Monday was the first day of training. And registration for these events can sometimes be interesting. Let’s use that word, interesting.

My cat has arrived, if you can hear him meowing in the background. So he may well make an entry into this podcast as well. I don’t know how sensitive this microphone is.

But yes, so we arrived and it was basically, show a QR code, you got your bag. It took me all of about 10 seconds.

And for that 10 seconds to be an experience, I’m sure there were many, many, many hours went in in the background, looking at all of the names of the registrants, etc. Nick had done some really interesting work, and he’d looked at where people were coming from, a lot of data and looking at different age groups, grade groups, all of this kind of stuff.

And he had some interesting insights when I met with him, and he said, you know, we actually have somebody here who’s 85. And then he talked to me about the various different age brackets, etc.

I kind of put that information to the back of my head and thought, because I do a lot of the social media for Iogkf, I’m definitely going to go and meet this man. So anyway, registration happened very, very easily.

And then within the bag was a cop. You could take this cup every morning from about half-eight onwards to the little bar area that was in the venue, and you could get a free coffee. Now for somebody like me, so I don’t do breakfast, I never have.

It’s one of those things that I actually spoke to when I was competing. I spoke to a dietitian and she said, don’t worry about it. If you don’t do breakfast, you’re just probably not programmed that way.

Obviously, if you’ve got a big, intensive day and you do need to do something, just feature that into your way of your modus operandi. So there I was, literally every day with my cup. The coffee, oh wow.

So I did end up watering it down. Otherwise, I would have been an absolute nervous wreck, but we will get to that later. So we line everybody up.

The other thing these guys did, which I thought was ingenious.

So if you’re not sort of sure about what I’m going to talk about, or if this is new to you, when we line up, we line up in great order in Iogkf, and we had four and a half, 500 people to line up. That is a lot of organisation.

Now, most people know each other, and they kind of know who’s what grade, because within our Gascues, we split people up into their grades. So you have the front row, which pretty much organizes itself.

The genius part comes from the fact that these guys put arrows for the front row, because the hardest thing is, when the front row doesn’t line up correctly, then everybody else behind them isn’t correct.

Now, this sounds, why am I talking about lining up? But it’s actually really important, because you then know your place, and that then becomes your place for the week.

And we line up together, and it ties into something that I will come to in a while that Nakamura Sensei talked about at the end of the Gashaku. By the Monday, I just couldn’t believe I was there.

It was an absolutely wonderfully orchestrated, organized start to the Gashaku. I’d had a wonderful journey to get there. I met Uta, who I was staying with.

Our landlord type person, our Airbnb guy, was just insanely lovely. And by Monday, I stood in my place. I was saying hello to everybody.

It took so many hugs, et cetera. And then we all bowed in. Nakamura Sensei opened the Gashaku by welcoming everybody, obviously, and telling us to train hard.

But also, he started a theme which ran through the entire Gashaku. And that was respect. And he talked a little bit about, you know, and we’re not political as an organisation.

We’re not into kind of talking politics or anything like that. But he did sort of say, there’s a lot going on in the world. And, you know, we should show respect to each other.

And it starts here. And I’ll talk about his closing speech in a little while. And then we started the training.

And every morning, we come together, we split down the middle of the class, and we come together and split down the middle. Sounds like a bit of an oxymoron, but anyway, there we go.

The instructor would stand in the middle, and then they would take us to Jumbiundo, which is sort of getting ready for the training that’s going to come.

And then they had a few minutes at the end to kind of add on their little bit of exercises and where they wanted us to kind of focus what they were sharing. I was absolutely blown away by all of this.

It’s just you look around and you see so many people working hard, trying really hard, straining to see.

And I have an unusual kind of job in some of this because I do help Iogkf with social media and with capturing these things and I’m going to talk again.

It sounds like I’m saying I’m going to talk about a lot of things later on and I will do because I do have some really interesting things coming at the end of this podcast.

So I then get to kind of dip out and run around and start to take pictures of people. And I see this effort that people are putting into things. I see them trying.

And I’m reminded of a time many years ago when I trained with a very, very famous weapons instructor who came over from Japan and was teaching us kata and he kept dividing the group.

And in the end, he stayed with, why was I, a white belt, he stayed with us and he said, you know, you’re the most important group because you’re the guys that are working hardest to learn everything.

And when we do this warm up at the beginning, when, you know, some white belts could get a little bit overawed by this, the senior instructors walk around and help and make sure that everybody understands.

But also they help with things like the respect bit, which is when people are talking, you sit down if you’re at the front, so people at the back can see. And it then just becomes the modus operandi. And it was just a wonderful start.

You then move into the group training, and these guys who are organizing had scheduled four classes after the Jumbiundo, which was an hour a day. So you’re doing about four and a half, five hours of training all in.

And what I noticed from talking to the instructors and talking to Nakamura Sensei was that every instructor would finish their class, go to the instructor’s area, and then write down what they actually focused on in the group that they’d come from,

so that the next instructor could see or could look through the week and see what the groups had done. Because there’s nothing worse than if you’re a participant and you maybe do the same thing two or three times.

Of course, yes, there’ll be different aspects, but the repertoire that these senseis have is vast. This was one of the best gashacues I’ve been to in an awful long time with regards to the way in which things were taught.

I came away with so many new areas. I came away with so many things to focus on. It was just incredible.

It was absolutely incredible. The beauty of it as well, and one of the things that Nakamura sensei said, and I’m always saying this whenever I teach in art audio, write down what you learn. I can’t stress this enough.

This, I mean, at the end of the day, I can barely remember what I would have done in the first class. And it was beautiful, because I tell you why, in the registration pack, there was a notebook.

I looked around after every class, and people were writing things down. It was beautiful. And I was so, I was making notes myself.

It was just, it was wonderful. It was absolutely wonderful. So Monday was fantastic.

And don’t worry, I’m not gonna spend this whole podcast going through a day by day sort of recount. Well, maybe. We’ll see how it goes.

I’m kind of doing this on the fly. So Monday was beautiful, as I say, went and had some dinner with people. And as you walk around Vaghanen, we just met loads of people who were there for the gashacú.

And you could tell them of my love, because they all had orange t-shirts. But it was lovely. It was lovely.

And everybody was starting to settle into what becomes your gashacú, I would say your gashacú sort of way of living. You fall into a come home, put the suits on, get changed, maybe have a snooze, get changed for food, go out.

You don’t really need too much extra anything really, because at that point, you are really tired. And the energy, the way it peaks during the week is interesting, because Monday, Tuesday, everybody’s full of energy. Wednesday, everybody’s tired.

Everybody’s really tired. Thursday, Friday, you’re kind of easing yourself into the end of the gashacú. So it is one of those, yeah.

I would say Wednesday is definitely, for me anyway, it’s the hardest day. So Monday was lovely. Tuesday, we all line up.

And I’m thinking, right, myself and DJ Lambert Sensei, who works on social media with me, we’d kind of decided what we were going to shoot that day. I had my little list of things.

And one of the things I wanted to do was find the gentleman who was 85 because I wanted to interview him.

But as I was in the line up, I got a little tap on my shoulder, and Nakamura Sensei, who is our world chief instructor, took me to the hall actually that I’d been training in on the Monday. There was nobody in there.

And he said to me, I would like to see your kata. Now, I went from, the other thing to say is we’d cycled that morning because we’d rented bikes.

So I was kind of warm-ish, maybe not warmed up enough for karate because everybody was doing that out in the main hall. I was on my own in this hall with them, and he said, we start at Gekside H, our first kata. I thought, okay, let’s do this.

Right. And I kind of stopped thinking. My brain just shut off, and we worked from Gekside H all the way through to Super Empe.

And he was looking, nodding, walking around.

I was just trying to focus on, there was a spot on the wall that I will forever, it’s ingrained in my mind, that’s all I was looking at, as we did all of these kata, and I was just praying not to make a mistake.

Now, in the back of my mind, the week before we went, we were doing Sansaru kata. And we were doing it for, it was Sensei Nicola’s birthday, and we were turning around. And I made a few mistakes in this kata.

So, it just, I was thrown. And in my head, I was saying, don’t end up the wrong way, don’t make a mistake. Just trust yourself.

Just trust, I just remember thinking, just trust yourself. But this is the world chief instructor watching you, right? So, my heart was about two foot outside my chest, did all my kata.

You know, as best as you can, and you know, your brain kind of goes into overdrive, and I did try and quieten all of that down. And then he said, oh, okay, let’s take a look at Ten Show. And I just couldn’t help myself.

I just said, the fave, my favorite of all the Sanctions. Now, again, if you’re not a karate person, a Sanction is a breathing kata where you do have quite a lot of tension within your body.

It’s something that grows with you, and this is the wonderful thing of Gojiru and the Okinawan martial arts. There are katas there which will morph and change an awful lot with you, and that you can do things like hojuando, etc. to improve them.

I absolutely adore tensho. There is something in that kata I think just needs unlocking. I haven’t found it, but I spent a lot of time with it.

I think it’s beautiful. And I thought, okay, let’s do that. And then when we’d finished, and I at this point had no cognitive processes that were in any way suitable for deployment.

I was just, okay, fine, right, we go. Nakamura Sensei said, oh, somebody will speak to you. And then he went.

And I thought, okay. And then I was asked to join the pre-grading group, which was going to train later on that day. Okay, fine.

But I had a job to do. I needed to go and find this gentleman who is 85. And I needed to get him on film because we needed it for the social media.

So I was content shifting quite a lot. Off my headed, I found him. He’s an incredible man.

He’s 85, but he started training four years ago. And he was more than happy to go on camera. All he asked me was, can you tell me what you want me to say?

And I said, it’s up to you, really. You can introduce yourself and just tell us why you started training, how long you’ve been training, et cetera. It was perfect.

And it was such an inspiration. And actually, I shared that video with our own dojo, just so that people could kind of see if they couldn’t get to this gashaku. Because look, not everybody can.

These things are expensive. I just wanted people to have a little bit of the gashaku that they could take some energy from. So that was interesting.

So then, I was starting to think, right, well hang on a minute, I’m grading tomorrow then in that case. And then the nerves hit. So Tuesday evening, we went for dinner.

There was a few of us went out from Tooting Dojo from Germany, et cetera. And we found a lovely restaurant, lots of food, got the carbs in, et cetera, et cetera, and just had the chat. And it was fantastic.

Absolutely fantastic. We were actually staying closer to Ida, which I think is a bit bigger than Wagening. And so we found a restaurant that the wonderful Sergio, who’s Italian, booked for us.

And, oh wow, it was lovely. I, yeah, went home happy, big food belly, food baby belly, I should say, and then headed into Wednesday. And yeah, it was a case of then going through my bunk eyes in my head for the periods in between.

Now a bunk eye, if you don’t know, our applications, and in Gojiru, we have very specific applications for each kata that you need to show at grading.

Now, I had a slip somewhere along the line, and we were talking in our group, and I said, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, I’ve been thinking about all our bunkies. So from that point onwards, all the bunk eyes that we were referring to became bunkies.

And it kind of lifted the mood a little bit. But we were kind of a group then, a few of us within our fifth dan group who were training together, then were grading. So we kind of helped each other out.

How are you feeling? Have you got everything you need? How are you gonna, are you gonna go to the bow out?

Are you just gonna go to the preparation room? Have you got a partner for the grading? All of this comes into focus.

And yeah, so it was a high, highly charged period before the grading. The grading itself, I’m not gonna get into details. You know, it is one of those things that you kind of have to live through a six down grading.

It’s, yeah. It’s a lot of people looking at you. It’s a new hall.

I got in there beforehand, the day before and before the grading, just to make sure that I didn’t do something stupid and turn the wrong direction.

Super Empey is the cata for, well, there are lots of catas we were asked, but Super Empey is the grading cata where you have to show all of the bunkai, but obviously you have to show the cata. It does have lots of changes of directions.

It does have high energy, low energy, fast moving, slow moving. I wanted to make sure I was showing the right interpretation of the cata as I am doing it, and that it was obviously technically correct as much as I could get it.

And yeah, when we were brought out in our group to do the cata, I just thought, you know what, let’s just do it. Let’s just do it. I wasn’t entirely happy, not gonna lie.

The preceding catas, I thought I did better as well on the day that I performed them for Knock and Wear Sensei, which was the Tuesday morning. But I don’t know, maybe nerves took over. Yeah.

And once that was done then, it was like a whole other change because you don’t find out the results on some of the Sayonara Party, which is on the Friday. And then I went into really social media mode.

Lots of training and lots of them trying to get people to stand in front of a camera, which I get most people don’t like. But yeah. And there were some highlight moments.

You know, I saw some applications and I saw some bits and pieces that you think, oh my gosh, I’ve not seen that before. I want to take that home and practice it. But there was one moment, and there are things I think which stay with you.

I have memories of Sensei Kase doing certain things, his Sochin, yes, it was amazing. Absolutely amazing. And there are times when I’ve seen him, you know, that I have memories and I’m privileged to have those memories.

But there was one point, when Sensei Paul from England always does a very very very interesting session. And he’d done a session with us where we were using chichi, which is stone on a stick. I’d managed to get a very good size chichi.

I was actually very happy with the chichi I had. And he then started taking that into basics and then into Sanction. Beautiful.

It was beautiful, right? And he at one point said we’re now going to do Sanction push-ups. Now, if you’ve never met Sensei Paul, he is tall and he is a strong man.

If I say the word big, it won’t do him justice. He is a unit, okay? So I’m not going to talk about kilograms, but I’d say there’s a few of them in there.

And then he showed, he said, we’re going to do Sanction push-ups. I want them done this way. So these were very much push-ups, but they’re done with the breathing of Sanction.

Very, very slow. He took a plank position and he demonstrated three, maybe three or five. I don’t actually remember.

Each one had a down count of at least 10 and an up count of at least 10 seconds. Now, I was standing beside Rene, who’s one of the guys from Denmark, and both of us looked at each other and said, that is incredibly impressive.

And I talked to Sensei Paul at the Sayonara party, and I just said to him, I said, look, I’m really, I was really impressed with this. He said, but I could only do five. He says, they’re so hard.

And I was like, well, I don’t think I did one correct. So okay, challenge accepted. No, but jokes aside, yeah, I did say to him, I did, cause I wanted him to know that I was in awe of this.

I thought it was exceptional. And these are the things that you take away with you. So I won’t make excuses.

I don’t want to make excuses. But one of the things that since my operation, I’ve really struggled with my muscles in my stomach. So doing pushups is such an ask, and I haven’t managed to even do one from my feet.

I’ve been on my knees the whole time. But now I have his image in my mind that I’m going to take away for this, and it’s going to be something that I work on.

The week progressed, and as I say, you fall into this kind of time line or rhythm of a gashaku. By Wednesday, after the grading, I was shattered. Thursday, again, tired, but full of just being around people and the classes were amazing.

By Friday, everybody was saying the same thing. I can’t believe how fast it’s going. And it went.

It just went. And in the line up on Friday, you know, Nakamura Sensei, again, reiterated the whole focus on respect, et cetera, and how important it was that we grow our respect. And he made an interesting comment.

He said, you know, we grow good people in karate, and you’ll find the more senior people will help the more junior people or newer beginners to really find their way. And I just thought it was a lovely speech. It encapsulated everything.

We went and did our group stuff, and then came back, because the last class was with Nakamura Sensei. And I’ve been to enough of these to know that the last session is challenging. It’s the last challenge to seal the gashaku.

So I was really lucky, actually, because one of the gentlemen I’d actually graded with, Sensei Stevie Bigger from Scotland, had a bag of really, really sugary sweets. And he gave me one of them.

So I took this, and we hit the floor, and yeah, it was full on. It was proper kata, moving, kumite-type stuff. Relentless.

Absolutely relentless, to the point that one or two people were feeling a bit dizzy around me, and he did say, good luck, the best of luck with this. So yeah, so we finished that.

I then went to lunch with Nakamura Sensei, Linda, and Hanna, and we were talking about the wider Iogkf branding, et cetera. I can’t tell you, but I have a new project that I’m going to be working on. More details will be released in a while.

It’s very exciting. Nakamura Sensei kind of asked me to capture something. That’s all I’m going to say at this point.

I need to get the wheels in motion and do some project planning for this, but I think it’s going to be absolutely amazing and very insightful. So I’m really excited about that. I know I’m saying something about nothing, but there you go.

And so then straight back, have a quick shower, and we left for the Sayonara party, and yes, got to the grading results. And I was very, very happy to have, and successful, and then I danced for like three hours. The band was exceptional.

And again, in line with everything that these guys had produced for this gashaku, it was just, it was top notch. So I’m home. I am looking through my notes.

I’m gonna redesign my training schedule to incorporate some of the things that I’ve seen. Sensei Paolo showed us something with Toreguchi that I just loved. I’m gonna have to try and figure that out and figure out how I can show it to others.

It’s been incredible. It’s been a wonderful week. And yes, I’m very much looking forward to seeing what France can produce next year.

If you’re still with me, this has been Battle Ready. I’m Ciara Morrison. It’s been an absolute pleasure to share with you the experiences from the last week.

If you’re an Iogkf person and you can get along to a Gascogu, I highly, highly recommend it. There’s something for everybody. Everybody’s welcome.

And I hope to see you somewhere in the world on a dojo sometime soon.